Mistake made: I was once asked to build out a marketing team from scratch for a start-up tech firm. The board wanted to grow demand quickly and I was under pressure to deliver results by the end of the first quarter. Eventually, I settled for hiring a person who had the relevant experience but culturally wasn’t a good fit for the team or the company – mainly because they were available at short notice to start the role. But after two months, the employee had become a nuisance to manage: constantly making mistakes, upsetting co-workers, and conducting themselves badly among key stakeholders within the business. As a result, I had to exit the employee from the company, and I was cross with myself for allowing them to cause so much damage, not only to our overall performance, but to the team’s morale and my reputation as a hiring manager.
Lesson learned: This experience taught me the right people in a team are integral to your success. It also taught me the commercial and reputational damage that the wrong hiring decision can cause. I now handle recruitment very differently and will never resort to filling a role quickly for the sake of saving time again.
Mistake made: 10 years ago, I moved to a strategic communications agency to work on a global technology account and while there, discovered the business culture was very different to what I was used to. This was highlighted through the agency’s use of psychometric and personality profiling for its staff in order to encourage mutual understanding between co-workers. I vividly recall one meeting where the results of team members’ personality assessments were shared publically. There were about 15 people who were labelled primarily as ‘yellow’ creative types and only one who was a ‘blue’ rational/analytic thinker. That one was me. I received quite a few commiserative looks from all the yellows…
Lesson learned: This made me think that my outlier outlook and skills weren’t necessarily going to be channelled effectively within the agency, so when an opportunity came up to move client-side to a more autonomous role, where a blend of rational and commercial thinking (supported with a dash of creativeness) was needed, I jumped at the chance. This proved to be a great success because it suited my strengths. The lesson learned here is to take the time to understand your own personality and work style preferences, and then find a company and a role to match. If you only get one of the two, it can lead to frustration. Getting both could lead to marketing nirvana.
Mistake made: Mine happened during the development and production of a large direct mail campaign. It wasn’t until the fax backs started coming through in their hundreds that I realised I’d sorted the names and job titles, but not the company details. As a result, 10,000 mail shots were sent out to the wrong people. But while this was highly embarrassing, it actually went on to be one of our most successful campaigns ever.
Lesson learned: I realised that my focus had to be on doing fewer things, but really well. I still do my best to avoid making mistakes in the first place, but it’s crucial to recognise that making and dealing with mistakes is natural as long as you learn from them.
Mistake made: My biggest career mistake was not challenging colleagues in certain situations, which is something that can potentially cause career setbacks or frustratingly put you on a path that you’re not fully committed to. I recall numerous projects where I was either unclear on the objectives or felt we were being overly ambitious – an example being the time I was given a challenging brief to create video content for a corporate video channel that would deliver fortnightly programmes on a limited budget, which unsurprisingly died a slow and painful death because I didn’t have the confidence to challenge or push back at the outset. I also tried to run other projects that I knew were either impossible to deliver or weren’t going to achieve the desired result. Why? Because I was eager to please and sometimes didn’t feel confident enough to push back.
Lesson learned: Now, when I see a problem I’ll be one of the first to flag it. But if I could give my younger self any advice I’d say trust your instincts and don’t be afraid to speak up, question or challenge. Don’t let being in a more junior position or feeling like others are more expert or knowledgeable than you hold you back from contributing – in our team we really welcome new ideas and challenge from everyone. Instinct, conviction and confidence count for an awful lot. After all, what’s the worst that can happen?
Mistake made: The biggest mistake I’ve made repeatedly is to assume that everyone else thinks the way I do. When your job is to take complex, technical, often boring business propositions and turn them into simple, compelling, creative stories, it can become a bit of a challenge when people think differently. It’s also difficult convincing stakeholders who’ve spent their own careers mitigating corporate and creative risk to think in a different way. The temptation is to assume they want to change.
Lesson learned: I’ve learned to listen more carefully. If clients are actually seeking pain relief from their creative marketing strategies, there’s usually a whole world of plots and sub-plots forming part of the story that hardly anyone ever listens to. It’s around this point that the conversation changes from needing a creative agency to building a creative brand. I’ve learned to listen for the clues to tell me what the real objective is and what the real outcome needs to be. That way, creativity is used to support a broader cycle of B2B marketing improvement, instead of being diluted and dissipated in the short-term.
