BenAnyan.com

A three-year tenure as Creative Director in an awesome digital Advertising Agency came to an end in December 2018. On my last day at work, I was pleasantly surprised by an art piece that captured moving personal notes to me. At the center of the piece in cherry red caps is ‘BAD IDEA, BEN’. Without knowing the back story, it’s easy to mistaken that for the general consensus about my decision to move on. I’ll tell you the story that will bring things full circle.

I fell in love with the leadership style of my first Creative Director; Sitso. Sitso was never intimidated by genius and created a conducive environment to grow and shine. She was very open to dialogue and asserted her leadership through the brilliance of her ideas. When I got appointed as CD, I adopted her style, but I had serious challenges.

I inherited a team that was disgruntled for different reasons. I was very young and an outsider making his debut as a Creative Director. They were unsure if I deserved the job…if I could deliver (heck even I wasn’t cock sure). They were also used to a completely different way of working where 90% of the work was done by the person at the top. In many ways this had been convenient, but in other ways it didn’t foster individual growth.

Being creative was easy, winning the team was herculean! At brainstorms, people hardly contributed. This resulted in low morale, little project ownership, lack of idea diversity, low confidence and entrenched satisfaction with the ‘easy’ status quo. I tried many things (prayer especially), and what did the trick was a two-worded phrase that preceded most inputs/suggestions I made; ‘Bad idea…’.

I started using that phrase to indirectly give the team the license to critique my ideas; if I say it is bad, then it becomes easy for someone who genuinely thinks it is bad to ‘agree’ with me. If I think it is bad then clearly, I am not beyond reproach. I am open for constructive banter.

Over time, others started using the phrase to introduce their ideas; it became the unofficial brainstorm disclaimer. I discovered that when others used it, it wasn’t really to give others the license to critique, but rather to give themselves the license to share that suppressed idea in their minds. In starting with those words, they had defeated the toxic thought that their thoughts were bad ideas. In starting with those words, they owned the worst-case scenario…so what’s the worst anyone else could do?

Others saw how ‘bad ideas’ turned out great or sparked actual great ideas and they became more vocal. ‘Bad idea’ allowed me to ‘demystify’ the CD title and make ideation a truly democratic affair where good ideas won, regardless of who suggested them. It earned me my stripes with them and birthed some amazing ideas that made the agency a lot more relevant and profitable. At our very competitive internal awards last year‘Bad idea’ won ‘phrase of the year’.

So when I savor my surprise gift (as I do for hours on end) and I see the big bold ‘BAD IDEA’ in the middle there and how it encapsulates my philosophy as a Creative Director, and how that transformed the team, I do get emotional. At least in this one case, the ‘Bad Idea’ turned out to be one heck of a great one. One I’m definitely taking with me to my next role.