029 : Putting Creative Power Back into the Hands of Your People with Michael Ruby
If a leader wants to scale their creative firm, they need to allow their talent to work freely without an exacting eye—or to at least to keep over-specificity and micromanagement at an absolute minimum. The best leaders coach their teams and encourage proactivity and adaptation, not unlike in the sports world where perfect plans and strategies seldom turn out as expected during the actual game.
As a creative director, our guest Michael Ruby says that he gets his best work from his team when he gives them free rein to discover the look and feel of the project by themselves. It makes no difference whether these teams are outsourced or in-house. To explain this approach, Michael hearkens back to his experience in the theatre, noting that the greatest directors he’s ever worked with “didn’t give you the answer. They brought the answer out of you.” Instead of dictating to the actors how a line had to be said, the director would ask questions, allowing the performers to discover their characters and as a result bring them to life, free of contrivance.
Steve Chaparro and Michael Ruby discuss how to nurture a healthy creative culture through building camaraderie, finding a shared purpose, offering a path for growth, and harnessing the power of decentralized command. Stay tuned.
Here’s a glimpse of what you’ll learn:
- How team dynamic affects creative outcome even more than the craftsmen’s skills
- Drawing out the best in your people versus directing them to do something specific
- Leading your team without become a roadblock to your team’s creativity
- Why allowing your people to stumble helps them to make better decisions in the future
- Creating an environment to maximize camaraderie, purpose, and growth
- Upholding creative standards and maintaining your team’s sense of professionalism
- Why “creativity for creativity’s sake” never sells
- How creative agencies can deliver on their brand promise and the employee experience
Resources Mentioned in this episode:
About the Guest:
Michael Ruby is the Chief Creative Officer at Retina, a digital communications agency. Michael began his journey in the world of film and TV production, as well as acting for the theatre. As an Equity actor, he “toured the country performing for one of the nation’s most recognized and beloved producers of Theater for Young Audiences (TYA).” Later, he entered the marketing world, starting out as a copywriter for Stein Rogan + Partners, then taking on executive creative roles at Stein IAS and Flexport, and finally joining Retina in March 2020.
He graduated with a Bachelor of Science, Major in Communications (Film/Television), Minor in Philosophy at Boston University.
Sponsor for this episode:
This podcast is brought to you by Culture Design Studio. This is where I help creative organizations transform their cultures from being controlling to being collaborative. If you want to know more about I provide facilitation and coaching for your creative team, reach out to me at CultureDesignStudio.com.
This episode is also brought to you by DesignThinkers Group, USA, an innovation support. To learn more about DesignThinkers Group, go to DesignThinkersGroup.us.
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Announcer
Welcome to the Culture Design Show where we feature conversations with leaders and thinkers who are passionate about culture and design. Now, let’s get started with the show.
Steve Chaparro
This podcast is brought to you by Culture Design Dtudio. This is where I help creative organizations transform their cultures, from being controlling to being collaborative. Now, here are some of the things that I’ve learned. Your creative talent demands a co creative culture in order to produce their best work. But there’s a problem. So let’s see if we can recognize some of these signs. There’s no framework to move your culture forward. You have high turnover and low morale. There’s increasing toxicity across all levels. There’s team engagement and satisfaction that are on the decline. There’s a misalignment between the employer brand and the employee experience and there’s poor communication about expectations and values. So if you want to learn more about how I provide facilitation and coaching for your creative team, reach out to me at culturedesignstudio.com.
My guest today is Michael Ruby. He is the chief creative officer at retina, a leading global marketing communication and technology services company. So if I had a few words to describe Michael, we might use these passionate storyteller, pop culture geek, digital neurotic diet, Dr. Pepper addict, and an award winning business to business creative content and strategic specialist. Michael, welcome to the culture design show.
Michael Ruby
Thanks so much. I’m excited to be here.
Steve Chaparro
Well, I’m excited to have you here. I think, you know, when we first started communicating, I reached out to you because I love the intersection that you work in. It’s this this world of Creativity, this world of communications and those two things of story and and culture are really two big passions of mine and or my work is centered. So I’m excited to learn a little bit more about you and your work here.
Michael Ruby
Thanks. I’m excited to share and and dig into the conversation, every everything you just mentioned are passions of mine as well. So I’m excited to dig in.
Steve Chaparro
Well, I’m Latino. So a lot of my Latino brothers and sisters we have we have this love for this movie. People either love it or hate it, and it’s naturally Bray. And one of the phrases that he has in his movies is you got to be kidding. everything you just said, is my favorite thing to do every single day. And I feel like many times the conversations I have with folks are very similar. Well, one of the things I’d love to hear from you is you have a very interesting background. You know, you didn’t start your start in marketing or advertising your career. Maybe even your education started in You know, it doesn’t it makes total sense about how you arrived here. But share with us your, your academic and a little bit of a story of your professional career.
Michael Ruby
Sure. And yeah, it’s it’s, it makes sense when you think about it from the perspective of I’ve always been engaged in, in creative pursuits, right. But I will freely admit that I fell into marketing. It was not something that I intended. In fact, when when I interview job candidates who went to school for marketing, I typically first asked them why it just never was something that really made a whole lot of sense to me. Not necessarily the pursuit of it, but I never felt like I wanted to go sell things for a living.
Steve Chaparro
Yeah.
Michael Ruby
Right? I felt like I wanted to tell stories and what the the amazing revelation that I had was, you can tell meaningful stories in order to sell things.
Steve Chaparro
Yeah.
Michael Ruby
And to sell things that have real value for people. You know that the types of clients that I’ve been told Enough to work on. Typically our products and services that kind of make the world go round, but you don’t really see them. And then once you see them, like you can’t unsee them, which is pretty amazing.
Steve Chaparro
Yeah.
Michael Ruby
So maybe we’ll talk on that later. So that actually answer your question. I grew up in theater, performing all through, all through elementary and middle and high school, primarily musical theater and choral singing. And I went to college to study film. I went to Boston University in their film program to become a screenwriter. I had my I was dead set for the majority of my childhood on being a play by play broadcaster.
Steve Chaparro
You definitely have the voice for it.
Michael Ruby
Oh, thank you. Yeah, I mean, I used to we used to play you know, baseball video games on Nintendo and I’d be calling the games while we were going and then funny thing I turned 14, I saw Pulp Fiction and it changed my life. And I it was it was a moment I was like, Oh my gosh, you can you can write like this. And you can tell stories like this and it just the intersection of pop culture and storytelling. It’s certainly been done in other films, but I sheltered little me and my little one stoplight town in Pennsylvania like, close to it. I said, This is incredible. And so I set out to set out to be a filmmaker and went to school for screenwriting, was involved in the program at Boston University. And while I was there, I did the undergraduate theater programs as well, where I was writing and directing and performing. And my senior year of my senior year of college, I was fortunate enough to find my way into an internship with one of the daytime soap operas.
Steve Chaparro
Hmm.
Michael Ruby
So it basically my, my agent at the time said, I can’t sell any of your screenplays, which was her polite way of saying this is not good enough, but she was but but she she was pleased with the work and said look, we need to find a way to make you money and earn you a living so that you can support yourself while we try and get you to where you need. To be with the rest of your writing. So I spent the better part of a year as an intern to the head writer on one of the daytime soaps, which was both incredibly enlightening and incredibly painful. And it got to a point where I was back home after I graduated living in my dad’s basement. And then the editor says to me, you know, it’s going to be at least another couple of months. Before we can look at hiring anybody, I just got really frustrated, and I was like, I gotta do something to get out of here. And so I started auditioning and landed a job, doing a children’s theater musical getting to tour the country. So I got I got paid to see a vast swath of the United States that I’d never seen before performing for children, doing theater with other professional actors. I got into the actors union, I got into actors equity, and I moved to New York and started auditioning and performing and writing there. And along the way, I had two temp gigs as survival jobs, one Was stuffing envelopes, which was totally bizarre but educational.
And the other was that I ended up as a part time receptionist at an ad agency, then called Stein Rogen and partners now called Stein is, and it started out as the basics. You know, you, you mentioned that I’ve got a voice for commentating, I was told I have a good phone voice. And so I answered the telephones. I did some research on some things that were needed. I filed invoices for print proofs, because that’s dating myself a little bit, but we had to send out for print proofs for all of our advertising. And I spent a lot of time disappointing the the UPS and FedEx people who were asking, Well, where’s the typical receptionist, she’s much more so along the way, and in doing research on Ficus plants for the office, they saw that I could actually think strategically and that I was I was putting other things together and our chief strategy officer was losing her interned and needed somebody to help her put presentations together. She was brilliant. But she’s to put her decks together by tearing out legal pads and turning them sideways and writing her slides. And then tearing out pages for magazines and sliding them in with little marks like this goes there. And then we hand them off to somebody else to do the deck. They said, Can you do this? I understood I understood the the the method in her madness, and we immediately clicked.
So I worked with her for a little bit. I went away and did another theater tour and then came back and while I was doing shows locally, they said, you know, do you want to come back and work we still need somebody there. And I said, long as I can keep auditioning and going to rehearsals at night, I’d be thrilled to and I spent the better part of a year kind of getting paid to do a master’s degree in marketing, working at her side doing qualitative research, quantitative research, understanding, positioning and messaging and fundamentally how that then translates to creative and she kept offering me a job and said, No, I really don’t want to sell other people’s stuff for a living. And then I got a taste for copywriting because they had an opportunity for something there. She said to our CEO, you know, Mike and really right that’s actually what he went to school for try him out.
And so I got my first copywriting gig and I said, You know what, I could do this, I can actually get you know, I jokingly say that, you know, I switched to like eating more than acting. So it was like, wow, I can actually get paid to be a filmmaker through video and TV commercials. I can be paid to be a playwright writing sales scripts, I can get paid to come up with stories that have global impact. Because you know, the types of clients we had weren’t like chewing gum and diapers, not that those aren’t difficult things to sell. But they were educational products. They were technology products in industry. They were services that help people their jobs, and I just got really passionate about taking on that work. So that’s the long way around. It only happened over the course of a couple of years. But I found I was able to take this artistic background that I had and apply all of that stuff to tell different types of stories and reach an even larger audience.
Steve Chaparro
Yeah, I keep saying in all these interviews is I love what I’m hearing. And it’s true because I think in your what I’m hearing in your story that resonates with so many people’s stories of that I’m talking to is that many of these career journeys were not in they weren’t not necessarily part of these master plans, but he was part of a general curiosity and hunger to learn, and taking on things that you might not have taken on before. And just seeing where that leads, leads you. And I also think that part of it is just learning from that journey and there’s a little bit of brain damage that we have to go through right a little bit, some heart to some hard times and lean times. As we were talking about, you know, eating versus acting, and but there’s there’s something about that journey that we we would not outsource to anybody or we would not change. Because we learned so much about that right?
Michael Ruby
Oh, 100% I wouldn’t trade any of it. You know, I’ve had I’ve had people ask, you know, do you regret not going further with either your performing or after I stopped performing, I moved more to writing and producing and then I’ve still stayed active in that sense. But I don’t I feel like all of those things have been building blocks that have made me better. As a marketing professional as a storyteller. As a friend, as a parent. I feel like all of these things were, were kind of necessities for getting here. And the other thing that I discovered along the way is having a passion for how businesses work, and the cultures that are created within those businesses and finding out that, you know, work is not There’s a percentage of the work that is about the work. It’s about the craft of copywriting. It is about the craft of storytelling, it is about the craft of strategy. But that’s a small percentage of what the actual day to day is, which is really about how do you develop relationships with your colleagues? How do you motivate and get the most out of your teams? How do you convince a client to take a bold step that maybe they wouldn’t have ordinarily considered?
You know, I think, you know, one of the biggest differences that I found I spent, I recently just spent two years working in house at a at a start up at leading creative and content. I think the biggest difference that I found between being in house and being at an agency is that at an agency, you’re always being charged with trying to get somebody to go just step farther than they would ordinarily be comfortable with. Whereas in house, there’s such a responsibility and ownership that you’re constantly questioning like, is this color blue, really something that I can can live with for the next three to five years. Yeah. Am I going to be the guy who decided that we should be eggshell? And that’s going to be my legacy? Yeah, right. So there’s the the, I think that this whole journey is really been interesting in terms of being able to see like, how do people take ownership of a creative idea? How do they nurture a creative idea? And what is actually valuable about a creative idea from the creators themselves, as well as the people who actually buy those creative ideas and implement them to move their businesses forward?
Steve Chaparro
Yeah, there’s so many things here. And I think you’ve been part of creative teams for your entire career, whether it’s in the performing arts, whether it’s at an agency or whether it’s in house. What and I’m glad that you said that a lot of times, it’s more about the team dynamic. The client facing dynamic than it is so much about the craft because I think that’s really the focus of even this particular podcast is really about the culture of creative teams. And how can we reshape? How can we design those things? What are some some nuances that you have found in working with creatives, whether they’re again, performing arts agency, or in house? What are some similarities about the creative person that you have seen
Michael Ruby
Yeah, I’ll give you the first one. And it was, it was it was it was a it was a big revelation for me. And it was it was so obvious. It was one of those things that when you when you realize you’re like, Oh, my gosh, why didn’t I see this sooner? So one of the things that I always found from a really good director in the theater was that they didn’t give you the answer. They brought the answer out of you. Yeah. I always really appreciate it as an actor that when I had a director who didn’t say to me, say this line like this, or do this thing, they would say, Why do you think the character is saying this? What does the character really want at this particular moment? And so when I directed I very much took the same philosophy. I was If I was full of questions, I mean, I was also quick with answers. And I can come back to that as another similarity. But I was always quick to ask questions and try and help the actor discover it for themselves. And I think what was really interesting is, you know, a lot of the creative development that I found in in agencies and with clients was very kind of mandated and straightforward. And it’s, you know, the old the old joke make the logo bigger, like there’s, there’s this, you know, I think that should be 10% bigger than it is now. But yeah, but do you know what 10% even means?
You know, I, there was a revelation that I had at a certain point when I got far enough along into my career and a couple years into being a creative director, where it just suddenly clicked that the same principle applies, you know, whether you’re directing people on stage, whether you’re directing a production team offstage that helps to bring everything else there, or whether you’re directing the creative team with writers and videographers and designers and art directors and illustrator is it’s not so much you giving them the answer. It’s about helping to bring the answer out of them. And the second piece of it is then if they’re totally lost, then having an answer the most frustrating thing for me as an actor when I when when I asked the director something was when the director would just say, I don’t know. Yeah, that’s, that’s not okay. But if a director or creative director says, I don’t know, but let’s figure it out together, or is able to come back and say, This isn’t perfect, but maybe you might try this or ask Have you tried this? That’s much more motivational and ultimately gets you to a better answer because I find nine times out of 10 I may have an idea for something I may be building on an idea someone else has had but ultimately what they’ve come back and deliver is usually really surprising and delightful and far better than anything I could have done myself.
Steve Chaparro
100% agree with that. The foundation of a lot of the way I think and work as well. But I would imagine being that that is an epiphany that you had personally, and that you had to probably encounter some bumps and bruises in order to understand like, you probably had some great directors that absolutely exemplified that. But then you also had some examples that led you to say, you know, I will never lead like that I will never direct like that, whether that’s in any forum, how common is that particular insight of drawing out the best in people versus directing them to do you know what you want in any given moment?
Michael Ruby
You know, I think the thing that I’ve learned, especially in the last couple of years, having having spent some time in house as well is that there are principles of leadership that really apply across anything and everything. I mean, I think it’s the reason that business leaders very often enjoy reading books by sports coaches. You know, you get lots of folks who subscribe to while I’ve read film light enough on my excuse me. You know, I’ve read Phil Jackson’s book more I’ve actually I’ve read Phil Knight’s book not about the Nike business or I’ve been reading what Coach shecky said because it’s fundamentally about coaching you know, it’s a bit it’s really it’s really about the the interpersonal relationship and finding out what works best to help get someone to do their best work and realize their best selves. And everyone is different. Did you did you watch the last dance documentary? I did? Yeah. I mean, it’s it’s one it’s amazing and it was great kind of reliving my childhood seeing you know, seeing all that out again and pretending to be Michael Jordan in my you know, my front yard shooting hoops. But it was fascinating to see the entire episode about Rodman. Now phil jackson fully admits that like I gave Dennis Rodman a free ride on all this stuff. Because I knew if I let him go to Vegas and get married and be crazy, that he was going to come back and deliver like nobody’s business. Yeah, was the way to coach him.
Steve Chaparro
Yeah. Yeah, that was fascinating. For sure. That was the the big that Episode on Rodman and how Phil Knight or phil jackson coached him was amazing. And it’s probably not something everyone has the guts or insecurity as as a leader to do
Michael Ruby
Yeah, I mean, it takes a takes a lot of bravery to kind of be able to stick your neck out there and say, I believe in my team, I believe in my players, I believe in my teammates. And I fundamentally know that giving them the freedom to express themselves and even the freedom to fail sometimes is going to ultimately empower them to do more. You know, I read a really great book on on Creative Leadership recently that really said, you know, the the challenge as hard as it is for you personally, sometimes is that you have to let your team fall on its face. You have to let them learn you can’t always swoop in, otherwise inevitably, they’re always going to go a little bit lighter because they’re not To say, Oh, you know what, he’ll fix it, she’ll fix it, I can take it, I can take it to the to the five yard line and let him know carry it over the goal. Or they’ll just never learn and become empowered enough to do it themselves and you become trapped. And the goal is to be able to try and deliver value and then get the heck out of their way.
Steve Chaparro
Yeah, I’ve talked to so many founders, principals, creative directors at, you know, creative agencies. And especially as you know, when when an agency has seen a lot of success. Many times the leadership will believe it’s due to their hand in the work as as a majority of that work, and maybe that’s true. But I think one of the things that I’ve seen is that principals are creative directors that that has such a heavy hand or such a heavy presence in the work and they and they’re kind of hard drivers and maybe the successes was due to that hard driving nature. But as agencies start to grow, their ability to have their hand in everything is starting to wane. Or it actually becomes even more burdensome, because people are saying, hey, you hired me as an art director, as a designer to do what I do. But you’re having to put your fingerprint on everything. This is not what I came for. And I feel like in some cases, they need to transition from being I use, I come from the architecture background. So I use the term of architect of predetermining designing everything out from the get go. They need to transition from being that architect, to being a facilitator or being a coach, join out that best but also stepping back so that they can step up.
Michael Ruby
100% You know, I think there’s, there’s a point where somebody especially when you’re, when you’re smaller, where you you have to have that imprint and you have to be deeply involved, and you have To help train your team up to get there, but then ultimately you can become a roadblock. You know, I think you make a really good point about trusting the people you hire because you hire them to do a specific job. But then you also can become a roadblock to moving things forward. And I think that, you know, to your point about there’s, there’s, there’s that that kind of inflection point as a business is growing, where if you don’t get out of the way, you’re ultimately going to slow growth. You know, I think that you know, that that’s the biggest thing about it that I’ve learned. And it’s definitely been a personal lesson is that you’re never going to be able to scale and you’re never going to be able to move with agility, and you’re never going to get better if you don’t get out of the way. It’s that weird paradox of well, I feel like I have to be in there to get the work better.
But the fact is that like, there’s a point where you’re not there’s like a there’s like a ceiling, on where it can get better before you realize that it’s just not sustainable. And so, ultimately, you know, I think it really comes down to how do you scale you know, I think that’s one of the biggest lessons I’ve learned in the last several years is if you’re going To be able to do this, you’ve got to really step out of the way. It was really interesting. Last year, I heard general Stanley McChrystal speak, one of the most incredible public speakers I’ve ever seen. We he was our keynote, at our customer conference at flex port. And he spoke quite a lot about the power of decentralized command. And really, that, you know, the the military success in Iraq came from the point where people were able to get out of their own way, and stop blocking information and allow people in the moment to be able to recognize what the situation was and be able to act on it.
And the same principles very much apply. with creativity, you know, it’s you, you need to be able to make sure that everyone is aligned on the mission, you know, once what is the vision for what the creative needs to achieve, what is it that it needs to achieve for the business and for the client? And then give people the freedom and the moment to be able to answer a client’s question and provide their expertise to be able to Learn from it if it’s a mistake or to feel great about it, because they were able to help make a successful meeting, and to start delivering ideas that are going to help spark innovation in that moment, as opposed to sitting and waiting back until, you know, a creative director or an account director or CEO comes in and says, You know what, guys, here’s the way forward. It’s got to be much more, it’s got to be much more flat. You know, in terms of an organization, people all need to feel like they’re empowered to make decisions.
Steve Chaparro
Right. So I mean, that’s definitely what part of the scenario is empowering people to make decisions on their own, we’d actually probably would be surprised with the the quality of decisions that they would make but also being willing to sit with maybe they made a bad decision in a case or two and taking that as a as a learning moment. They will probably make surprisingly much better decisions moving forward than they had even if they made maybe even a good decision in that particular moment because they they learned the lesson behind some of those things and letting people you know, stumble maybe May I like that term better than letting people fail? Letting people stumble with what they’re doing and what are some other things that you’ve learned about what it takes to create a healthy creative culture in an organization?
Michael Ruby
That’s a great question. I mean, I think one thing is, camaraderie, you know, and making sure that everybody feels like they’re in it together and, you know, with with where I’m at, at rednet, it’s a it’s a particular challenge because we’re a distributed organization. Yeah. But that’s, that’s not new for that’s not going to be new or different for most people going forward. One, I think that’s just kind of the way the world but now especially, you know, within the pandemic and post pandemic world, folks are going to be much more distributed. You know, a lot of agencies had a real tough time when it was you know, do we work from home How do we work from home are we established All right, we were already ready for that, because I’ve got, I’ve got people on my team who are developers and designers who are in Bucharest, my content and social media team is in Glasgow. I’m just outside of San Francisco. We’re operating on three different time zones. And we all need to figure out how to work together.
And so you know, something as simple as having a weekly half hour stand up meeting with the team, where you know, it’s not a grim and gory. Let’s go through the spreadsheet of all the jobs we’re doing, but it is. What’s everybody focused on this week? What’s something you learned last week? What are some updates about good things that are going on a quick team shout out I I find every week we let somebody shout out somebody else on the team for something good. They did. And I was I was so pleased when somebody said, Hey, can I shout out somebody else within the agencies, not in our team and bring them into the meeting? I was like, yeah, the more the merrier, like that’s what this is about, and sharing creative ideas in there as well that may not come from Our particular industry, you know, sharing a campaign, like the moldy hamburger from Burger King. Yeah. You know, or sharing, you know, something that that does a piece of research about a current trend and creative or a podcast that might be helpful for people to listen to giving people more creative fuel. I think it’s I think it’s important to give people a sense of true camaraderie, whether they’re physically drinking beer and eating pizza in order to hit a pitch deadline, or they’re doing it thousands of miles apart, drinking beer and eating pizza, or downing candy from their home office in order to get everything done. So I think I think that’s one thing that’s critical.
I think another is finding, finding a bit of a shared purpose. Mm hmm. In terms of understanding like, what is it that you as a team want to accomplish? You know, not not every agency is out to bring home a shelf full of lions. pencils, you know, that may not be the kind of work that your business can do that may not be the kind of work that you want to do. How do you establish what you’re striving for, from a creative perspective in terms of where is the bar set? How do we continually push that bar for ourselves and then rallying around always making sure that you hold yourself to that standard. And one of the things that I really rely on my fellow leaders on my team for is making sure that we always maintain that truenorth it’s very tempting when a client needs to move quickly, or you’ve got an account person, it’s like, we just got to go to sacrifice that and just continually remind yourself that this is the type of work that we do. We are an elite creative agency. This is the bar that needs to be met. This is what our clients are paying us for. We have to make sure that we maintain that standard and that you know, where there’s wiggle room now and again, we’re not going to compromise our integrity. And with all that said, I would love to have Some lines on the shelf. That’s certainly a goal. But I think it’s really about establishing like, what, what are we all about? And who are we all about? And I think the last thing really is giving people a path to grow.
Steve Chaparro
Mm hmm.
Michael Ruby
You know, I think that that all too often folks, kind of do the work. And I’ve heard I’ve heard stories from colleagues about creative directors they’ve had, where they just don’t really give feedback about why something is quote unquote, good or bad. They don’t necessarily tell them where to focus to get better. It’s just trial by fire. And I think everybody has to at some point, take their lumps, get that redline document, get the ink all over the page. Figure out you know, what’s what’s going to work or not work. It’s like that first college paper you do and you get to see and you’re like, but this was an A paper in high school. And they’re like, Yeah, but now you’re not in high school. Any different league? Yeah, but, but you have to be specific. Like there have to be things that are very clear about how you get better. No one’s ever gonna, no one’s ever going to succeed.
You know, I I had a colleague of my last gig who said that he had a creative director at a I won’t use the brand name but a very large and successful electronics company. And he would deliver copy to the creative director, the creative director would look at it and go, that’s not the brand. And he would go, Okay, well, what do I do with it? That’s just not the brand, bring it, bring it back. And I’ll tell you when it’s on the brand, and we’ll go from there. But there was no further direction. So I think clarity and specificity, you know, I like to say when I’m when I’m when I’m working with with my creatives on generating a good creative idea, and especially a good headline, that there’s specialness and specificity. You know, the more that you can use the language of your customer, the more that you can find a little cultural nuance of what they do. It may mean nothing to anyone else in the world who reads it. But if it’s a plant manager and a food processing plant, who reads that line, and it speaks to them, then you did your job if an institutional investor looks at it, and that joke means Nothing to anyone else who doesn’t understand advanced derivatives. Who cares if He chuckled or she chuckled. That’s a win.
Steve Chaparro
This podcast is brought to you by DesignThinkers Group an innovation support firm. I am joined today by Marc Bolick, who is the managing partner. Welcome, Marc.
Marc Bolick
Thanks, Steve. It’s great to be part of the Culture Design Show
Steve Chaparro
Marc, a lot of people are curious about what makes design thinking useful for culture change. Can you give us your perspective on that?
Marc Bolick
Yeah, that’s a great question. And Steve is, you know, design thinking is is a problem solving methodology that’s based on building empathy for people. And it’s, I think, through that building empathy for the people that you’re serving that gives people a purpose to their work. And I think there could be no better foundation for building a people centered culture than that.
Steve Chaparro
Marc, I think I agree with that. That’s the reason why we do work together folks. If you want to learn more about design thinkers group, go to designthinkersgroup.us
Steve Chaparro
One of the things that you mentioned, that there’s so much about like, one of the things that I, I start to think about is when you talk about a little bit about culture in terms of what determines what we do you know what we stand for, but this informs what we say yes to, and then informs what we say no to. What are some examples with obviously not naming names, but what are some examples of, of stands that you’ve had to make, or the team has had to make whether I read now or other places, where you said, this is obviously something that goes against who we are, and we’re not going to move forward with this. Can you give me an example? Maybe maybe have to be slightly less specific than than what I’m asking.
Michael Ruby
Yeah, that’s a that’s a really that’s a really tough question. There are a couple things that I get that I can probably touch on. So yeah, here’s one for certain. So video has become a very challenging area now. Because anybody with an iPhone can make something. And people think, alright, well, if I can shoot this on an iPhone and edit it on my phone and iMovie, then this stuff is easy. It should take no time at all. And it’ll just be great. And I, on the one hand, I love that I love that there are lower barriers to entry in order to create great content. I love the fact that we can be having this conversation recording right now over the internet. I love that. You know, I tape say to people and I say well, is it good enough to shoot on iPhone as it looks Steven Soderbergh shot an entire feature film on an iPhone. If it’s good enough for him, it can work for us now. But there’s still there’s still a level of professional quality that has to be there in order to differentiate the good stuff from the bad stuff.
And, you know, folks don’t realize when they watch a lot of consumer generated content or influencer content, that there was so much time putting that together, they just look and see, oh, it’s a little rough around the edges, it was probably fine. They spent hours thinking about how they were going to prank their sister, right? They spent hours thinking about how they were going to do some trick shot. So, you know, I think we’ve had a number of conversations with clients when it comes to video about non compromising on quality, especially as it pertains to voiceover. You know, they say, Oh, that’s no problem, so and so’s got a nice sounding voice just you know, have her recorded, it’ll be fine. I’ll have to say no, you you need you need to spend a couple hundred dollars and hire a voice talent. You need somebody who understands inflection and you need someone who’s going to be able to deliver this, so that it doesn’t just sound like anything else. A podcast is different.
As you know, that’s a different type of personal recording where someone’s natural voice is fine, but this needs to be someone who sounds like it. character, they need to sound comfortable delivering and selling. So that’s, that’s one area where I know that we we’ve certainly had to stand up with clients, they know, we need to we need to professional recording, we need actual animation, we need to make this thing work for real. I know that that’s been a challenging area. And another has similarly Ben, you know, a lot of the time and it does come down to quality with with photoshoots. You know, folks figure All right, well, you know, stock will do and sometimes it will we we work magic with stock, everyone works, magic was done. But sometimes to capture what you really want, you have to create that scenario on camera, you have to find the right people who represent the customer, you have to find the right locations and you need to craft what that is. And the conversation becomes with the client about how do we get the most value out of this for the money that you’re able that you’re able to spend? Yeah, so I think that very often it’s a lot of production where we where we have to worry about that. The other place that it often ends up happening. You know, one of the things I figure things out as I babble. Very often there’s a really interesting disconnect that happens between an approved strategy and the creative execution. It’s like you spend typically in an inordinately larger amount of time at the outset doing the strategy, like the the old joke is, you’re gonna spend three months on strategy and three days on creative.
But you spend all of this time working with your internal team working with a client working with whomever, and you work really hard to really, you know, squeeze that coal down to get this perfect diamond differentiated, interesting, sharp break through strategy, and you have the message and all that stuff there. And then you take it into creative execution, and suddenly they start walking back. Mm hmm. And you have to remind them, no, remember, we said we weren’t going to be feature focused. We’re going to be benefit focused. Right? We said that we were going Use this language describe the brand, not this language to describe the brand. You know, you said you wanted to be able to push boundaries and change perceptions, but this just reinforces what you did before. And it’s it’s not necessarily as much about compromising on our creative quality as ensuring that we don’t compromise on the expectations we all set at the beginning, right? It’s like saying, look, we’re going to drive all the way across country we’re going to go from from New York to LA and then somewhere in the middle. Somebody’s like, I’m good with Omaha. Yeah, yeah. Right. So I think those are those are very common ones. I think I’ve been pretty lucky in my career that we have, we haven’t had too many times where we’ve had to be like, no, and you know, toss our toys out of the pram and you know, that’s that’s That’s no way to work. That’s that doesn’t work for anybody and and creatives to do that they’re not really operating with the right mindset, you need to bring solutions. But by the same token, I think sometimes it comes down to reminding people. This is the standard that you’ve set for us as your creative partners. And for us to be able to follow through, you know, we’re being strong not for us to be, you know, difficult or be a barrier, quite the opposite. We’re doing this as your advocate to help you succeed. And we hope that you would trust us as your partner to do that.
Steve Chaparro
Yeah. I mean, there’s so many similarities that I’m hearing you say to my work and in the field of architecture, many times there was this idea of, of what we would call strategy and planning at the beginning of a project, then there’s the actual design documents or you know, design and then there was construction, many times the things that we generated in the planning or strategy stage because of what we understood to be sometimes not even the needs of or the wants of the clients, but truly what were their needs and determine Okay, you’re hiring us to deliver on this strategy. And as what we started to see as as you go through that process, if you’re handing off, say from a planner, to a designer, and that person is out Your your firm. And then then that designers handing it off to the contractor. There is what we would call it vision erosion that would happen throughout the process. And so almost like a, you know, in film, you would have the story editor or making sure that there’s this continuity of things that are happening throughout the, that’s their job is just to make sure that we’re staying on script or a strain on staying on strategy to make sure that that happens. And yeah, and I love that posture of saying you are hiring us to deliver on the strategy that we generated at the beginning. We cannot be tempted you you client cannot be tempted with just, you know, a whim that you get throughout the process if it’s off that strategy.
Michael Ruby
Yeah, I mean, it’s, we’re, we’re in this together. It’s, it’s, you know, it’s it’s the Lord of the Rings. There’s the fellowship that is there. We’re all setting out to be successful together. And that’s not to say things won’t change. Sometimes the market condition changes sometimes You realize, as you’re going that you have to make a little bit of a shift. And that’s fine. But I think it’s about what is that core objective that we’ve we’ve said that we’re going to set out to solve creatively. And really just staying true to ourselves and staying true to that partnership. So that sure details can change here and there. But does the core of it really come through to really deliver upon what needs to be done? You know, create creative is about solving problems, right. It’s not about you know, I think too often people think brand or creative and they think, Oh, it’s, it’s pretty pictures and pretty sounding words. But fundamentally, we as creatives are solving problems, it may be a design problem, it may be a story problem. Typically, it’s a mixture of both.
But I don’t, I don’t typically like to look at something when you know, when we’re given a brief where it’s, you know, well come back with the creative idea. No, it’s a creative solution. You know, when we look at what we’re going to come up with, it’s not just about How do we find a clever way of saying something, you know, creativity for, quote, creativity sake is not, it’s not going to sell anything. Fundamentally, we have to be able to do something that’s going to advance a business. So we look at what’s the business problem that we solve? And sometimes, sometimes that’s an ad, which is what’s in the brief, and sometimes it’s something else.
You know, I think what it’s been talked about forever, so, you know, chalk me up on the cliche board, but I got to bring it up. I’m always really inspired by the work that that mccannon statestreet did with the fearless girl brief that came in was, you know, we need to promote, you know, an index fund that’s based on companies that have female leadership, and they could have come back and given them an ad campaign. But it was an open brief and they said, No, you know what, we’re going to look to try and make a real statement instead of an ad. They came back with a real physical experiences and you know what, we’re gonna place a brown statue of a defiant little girl in front of the bowl, you know, down in the financial district and it’s sparked a national conversation and so much more and delivered far more for the business than than if they’d spent a considerable amount of money on an ad campaign. So I think it’s, you know, again, it goes back to the heart of the brief and how the heart of the agreement, Heart of the fellowship, what are we trying to solve. And as creative people, we’re going to bring you solutions to do that and you can choose which one you want to take, but our job is to try and give you the best one and what we think is going to deliver
Steve Chaparro
Right I love it, especially the fearless girl I mean, we’ve literally she came was in the news yesterday, you know, with a little mask on that someone had put on her and just kind of like, you know, the new context of what the fearless girl represents not just as a girl but as a as this icon, iconic expression of, of hopefully our stance as a humankind. In this context, I want to go one final direction before we end. So a lot of your work has been in the area of brand right telling the stories of Have a particular product or a particular service. And we know that a brand always, always makes a promise there’s a brand promise. But then we we can always look to see whether the company actually delivers on that brand promise to deliver the appropriate customer experience. Right. There’s always a question of whether those two things align.
And so that’s the work that that much that you have been a part of. I have felt that in creative agencies Actually, it’s a very universal question. As companies as organizations, whether we’re selling a professional service, a product or an experience, how well are we delivering on our promise, and so even it’s almost like a do a little bit of a meta situation here. Okay. Creative organizations. We always want to help organizations, create a promise and then deliver on that promise. So We have client facing things that we espouse as agencies as creative organizations. However, the question then becomes, do we do that for ourselves as an employer brand for our creative agency, we tell people talent that is out there. Here is what it looks like to work for us. This is our culture. This is our story. We communicated with our voice via different types of media. But then we ask ourselves, are we delivering on that employee experience internally? What are some lessons that we can learn for creative agency to one, tell that brand promise but also deliver on that creative employee experience?
Michael Ruby
That’s a very meta but it’s but it’s a it’s an important question. And I think I think the answer is that some some companies probably do a well and and lots of Don’t I think overall, it is on it’s on a case by case basis, but that we can do better. Right? I mean, I think that that changes are starting to be made. But there are there are a number of things that are kind of culturally ingrained in creative organizations, whether it goes back to old school ways of working, whether it is kind of the old creative culture as well in terms of you know, it’s it’s a boys club, and it is in many instances, it’s also still a white boys club, like there’s an that said from a white boy like but we have to recognize that there’s a lot of lip service paid in terms of getting true diversity and inclusion in our creative and having having broader perspectives on how to develop creative ideas. And I think that if we’re going to deliver as creative organizations that that representation is important. I think that that’s something that we definitely have to do better in terms of our of our promise. I think that our ability to do to develop creatives can be better.
So that goes back to what we talked about earlier. I think that, again, this idea of trial by fire can’t be enough. You know, and I think again, some agencies do better jobs than others. But you know, we need to look at this the way that a number of other fields do, where they have true apprentice programs and really look at developing skills and having shadow programs and helping people to really learn and part of that also comes from you know, going back to kind of the the be inclusive measure, and this is, you know, somebody who just crossed the, the the mythical 40 threshold. We need to keep older creative professionals in the game. It’s, it’s typically seen as a young person’s game and what happens is, you you lose so much institutional knowledge about how things are done? Not necessarily like we have to do it the way that it’s always been done.
But in terms of how do you have a relationship with a client? How do you maintain a certain standard of creativity? How do you help train other people in? How do you learn from the mistakes that we’ve made, so that you don’t have to make that you can make new mistakes and learn from those? You know, I was I was very lucky that when I, when I started in our CEO who became my mentor, you know, he was also our Chief Creative Officer at the time, and he had so much experience and was so invested in teaching me how to do things, and I had something that I work really hard to try and be accessible and available for the folks on my team, whether they’re a direct report or not, to make sure that they learn. You know, I think I think that that teaching and learning are really important. And so as much as we need young creatives to bring new ways to do things, and to bring a fresh perspective and being you know, really plugged into what’s relevant, like Tic tocs interesting but like, I’m not on Tick tock, I’m the on the old fogies saying get off my lawn detector. But you know, there needs to be a balance of, you know, my social guy Louis, who knows all about Tick Tock and me who’s like, that’s what my kids are into. My kids say, it’s interesting, how do we do this and then guiding that to happen? So, you know, I think those are all areas where I think our our brand promise of being truly creative. I think, I think we, we fall a little short in terms of being able to really educate folks and we rely too much on schools and the school of hard knocks and not taking it upon ourselves to really be mentors. And I think that we can do a heck of a lot better job in terms of being inclusive in all senses, you know, whether whether it’s, you know, ethically, whether it’s generationally, whether it’s by gender, we need to continue to do better.
Steve Chaparro
Yeah, I appreciate the candor in your response. Because I think that the I think that’s the first step forward is understanding that we have done some great things, but we have so much more work to do. And I think the time that we’re living in right now, in terms of living in the middle of this pandemic, which is for many people has disrupted the way we work. You know, maybe some organizations like yours have already been somewhat distributed. But for many other cases, it has disrupted disrupted the way we work and also with the the issues of racial equity as well. You know, what you’re talking about, you know, if the design and creative industries are primarily, you know, white boys clubs, if you will, as you said, I think that there are some major strides that we can make, and I think there’s a lot of things that are bubbling up with this, like this is just the perfect storm of things to be voiced that maybe people who had kept quiet before are now speaking up and people who have have spoken up are now speaking louder and are publicly not tolerating the way things have been. And I think this is, I think this is a wonderful opportunity, as hard as it is as uncomfortable as it is. This is a wonderful time for us to learn, and how to make some changes moving forward. So I appreciate what you’re saying, because for those in leadership to recognize this is a powerful thing, but also to be able to act on it.
Michael Ruby
Thanks. I mean, I think it’s supremely important. You know, I see it, you know, coming full circle to your first question, you know, I see it, you know, and then theatrical community right now, as well and seeing all my friends, you know, really starting to recognize, you know, what, what is the relationship with privilege in the theater and how do we make sure that everyone’s voices are represented in the stories that we tell? And it’s, it’s, it’s both it’s both difficult for for some of us to be able to have to come to terms with Some difficult things. But also, I think really important that we recognize the issue and address the issue and actually stop paying lip service to it and really do something about it. And I think as creative professionals in whatever field, we’re never really going to realize our potential to truly create great work that’s representative of all of us until everybody gets you know, real equity and, and a stake in the game. And it’s, it’s on it’s on us who’ve had that opportunity to help lift people up and into that position, and it’s not on them to keep pushing their way. And we’re all in this and we all have to take care of each other.
Steve Chaparro
Michael, if people want to learn more about your work and your work I read now where can they find you?
Michael Ruby
Yeah, our our agency website is retinacommunications.com. You can also find us on LinkedIn and if folks want to find me on the interwebs I’m on LinkedIn, you know, LinkedIn slash Ruby writer, or Rubywritercom. And I’m on Twitter, although I’m not quite so vocal. They’re high. It’s mostly for news, but feel free to follow me there as well.
Steve Chaparro
All right, Michael, thank you so much. This has been an awesome conversation. I really appreciate it.
Michael Ruby
Thanks so much for the opportunity. There’s been a lot of fun.
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