“Create Magic”. That’s what serial ad man Sir John Hegarty of global agency Bartle, Bogle and Hegarty said in a speech tonight to staff and clients of Manchester ad agency BJL. Almost Bransonesque in his style and delivery, Sir John delivered ten key points aimed to enthuse the agency folk to greater things. These were: – 1) Agencies can innovate. 2) Agencies can create media opportunities 3) Agencies can create programming. 4) Agencies creativity can be the media. 5) Agencies can persuade clients to be brave. 6) Agencies can tackle growing social issues. 7) Technology has always been a spur to creativity, now more than ever. 
Agencies can expand their influence with clients. Integration is now vital. 9) Agencies can invent products. 10) Agencies can use the recession to be more creative. As any good ad man would, Sir John showed plenty of example of his work such as this piece for Xbox and this piece of programming, which ended up on MTV. As you often find with great leaders, Sir John had humility in bags, an underlying confidence, rock solid principles and an authentic delivery. That’s how you survive in the advertising world for 44 years. Rock on.
So, following on from yesterday, here are the key words that people used when describing behaviour of managers which lead to demotivated people. Indecisiveness, aggressiveness, selfishness, inconsistency, favouritism, being confrontational, judgmental, micro-managing, inefficient, poor-listening skills, egotistical, bullying, intimidating, negative, bad-tempered, sly, lazy, inflexible, political, confrontational. That’s quite a kit bag of things to beware of. I’m sure you must know someone that does some of these and also how little their team really do for them. Be a part of the team, not apart from the team.
We’ve been discussing leadership today, in particular looking at the qualities and skills whch great leaders possess. Let me share with you some group output which people said were the positive characteristics of a great leader. They have or display: – Conviction, strong principles, are level headed, inspirational, personable, have humility, are assertive, show tenacity, passion, guts and enthusiasm, are self-confident, humorous, trustworthy, empathetic, honest, assertive, creative, supportive and authentic. If you’ve got all of these, brilliant, write a book and it will be a best seller. Tomorrow, I’ll post the opposite. Behaviours that lead to de-motivation.
The IoD (Institute of Directors) issued an e-shot recently in which they highlighted 10 Ways to Survive the Economic Downturn. There are some good bits of advice in there, some a bit obvious (avoid borrowing), however the main thing is to do your basics well.
My eleventh tip is don’t forget to be a leader. In adversity, it’s easy to do the ten things above, however if you’re doing them in a state of uncontrolled panic, you’ll make mistakes and you may not see the wood for the trees. A great saying to sum this up is “If everything is a priority, nothing is a priority.”
Jim Collins in his book “Good to Great” makes the point to decide what you can be the best in the world at and then structure your organisation to deliver it. In his BQF blog yesterday, innovation leader Paul Sloane made a good point too, if you can’t complete this sentence with the unique proposition of your business “Only we can…..”, you’d better get your thinking cap on.
So my suggestion is by all means do the things that the IoD recommend but also bring alive point 11 by establishing your leadership, driving out your uniqueness and continuing to innovate.
“Create Magic”. That’s what serial ad man Sir John Hegarty of global agency Bartle, Bogle and Hegarty said in a speech tonight to staff and clients of Manchester ad agency BJL. Almost Bransonesque in his style and delivery, Sir John delivered ten key points aimed to enthuse the agency folk to greater things. These were: – 1) Agencies can innovate. 2) Agencies can create media opportunities 3) Agencies can create programming. 4) Agencies creativity can be the media. 5) Agencies can persuade clients to be brave. 6) Agencies can tackle growing social issues. 7) Technology has always been a spur to creativity, now more than ever. 
