Leading with Creativity and Bravery with Todd Henry

Danyel McLellan [00:00:01]:

Running an agency can be a lonely proposition, but it doesn’t have to be. We can learn how to be better, faster if we learn together. Welcome to Agency Management Institute’s Build a Better Agency podcast presented by White Label IQ. Tune in every week for insights on how small to midsize agencies are surviving and thriving in today’s market. With 25+ years of experience as both an agency owner and agency consultant, please welcome your host, Drew McLellan.

Drew McLellan

Hey everybody, Drew McLellan here from Agency Management Institute, coming to you with an episode this week that I was super excited to dig into. I am looking forward to this conversation with today’s guest more than I’ve looked forward to a lot of conversations, and I think you’re really, really gonna— you’re really gonna dig it. You’re gonna love it. I’m excited. I’m excited. Um, so I’m super excited to introduce him to you and dig into the conversation.

But of course, we have a little bit of business to take care of first. Very sincerely and deeply, I want to thank our friends at White Label IQ. They are the presenting sponsor. They’ve been with us for many years. They support both the podcast and the Build a Better Agency Summit every May. And they really believe in agencies. They are, they are truly dedicated to being a great agency partner. And it’s one of the things I love and respect about them. You know, they love and believe in agencies so much that they actually helped found an organization called Agency Core, which is basically a research arm built to better understand agencies, where agency owners’ heads are at, what they’re thinking, what they’re struggling with. And then they share back what’s going on in our world. And you’ve seen us, it’s sort of the companion piece of research to our Agency Edge study every year. So you’ve got Agency Edge, which is talking to clients of agencies and Agency Core, 4, which is talking to agency owners. And then what I’ve been doing is I’ve been sort of looking at those 2 studies as sister studies and looking at the trends between them. But at White Label, because their whole business is supporting agencies with design, dev, paid media, AI integrations, the insights that they’re trying to get so they can better understand their customers and they can help them better also serves us as agency owners to learn more about ourselves and what other agencies are going through. And so I just really salute White Label for the investment of time, energy, and money that they put into actually giving us insight into the business and how committed they are to agencies and their success. So if you want to learn more about them, head over to whitelabeliq.com/ami and you can learn about how you can interact with them. You can learn about a special deal they have for you as a podcast listener. And if nothing else, as I always ask you to do, just shoot ’em a note and thank them for the podcast. If you enjoy this show, please, please, please take the time to let them know that you recognize that we’re coming to you every week because of their support. That would be really, really lovely. So, uh, I would love that.

The other thing I wanna remind you about is we have, uh, really great workshops all through the fall and into December. So a mix of Live workshops. We’ve got some virtual workshops, one-day workshops that we’re experimenting with. And if you go to the Agency Management Institute website under the How We Help tab, you can find workshops and you can see the whole series there. We would love to help you grow and strengthen your team and frankly grow and help you get stronger and better as well, which is what this episode is really all about.

So. I am, I am super excited to introduce our guest. So Todd Henry is a guy, has a body of work. He’s written several books. I think it’s 7, and they are all absolutely fantastic. So the truth of it is that for many of us in the business, we grew in our career because, and we got promoted because you were the best writer or the best strategist or the best designer in the room. And now for many of you, you actually lead a room of people who do what you used to do. And honestly, for many of you secretly, you kind of wish you were still doing that work yourself instead of your job as an agency owner. But Todd Henry in his books, in his presentations, has spent 20 years helping agency people, uh, and creative people, both on the brand side and the agency side, sort of survive that exact moment of making that transition to leading creativity And we’re gonna talk about the definition of creativity once we welcome Todd to the show, but leading creativity and inspiring creativity while also needing to be creative ourselves. And so I cannot wait to have this conversation. I cannot wait to introduce you to Todd because I think you’re gonna find him really practical in terms of like some great suggestions, but also really inspirational. And so without any further ado, let’s welcome him to the show. Todd, welcome to the podcast.

Todd Henry [00:05:28]:

Drew, it’s so good to be here. It feels like this is a long time coming. I know we’ve been interacting for a while, so I’m super grateful for the chance to chat with you.

Drew McLellan [00:05:35]:

Yeah, me too. I’ve been looking forward to this. Tell everybody a little bit about your background and sort of how you came to do what you do today.

Todd Henry [00:05:44]:

So I studied marketing in school, and like any good marketing major, I did a tour of duty in the music business right out of school on the performing side, actually, which is interesting because you really learn a lot about marketing marketing. And you think it’s all about the work, but it’s often about how you position the work is sort of what ends up resonating. And then, like a lot of people in the music business, I met an amazing woman and she convinced me that music business, gainful employment, marrying an amazing woman, you can have 2 of the 3. You can’t have all 3. It’s sort of like cheap, fast, good, right?

Drew McLellan [00:06:18]:

That’s right.

Todd Henry [00:06:19]:

So, I chose gainful employment and marrying an amazing woman. We settled in Cincinnati, Ohio. Through a series of connections, I ended up as a creative director At an organization, had a great experience there. After about 5 years though, I had a team, grew the team to about 40 people, and I was really struggling with how to keep them engaged. Like a lot of creative organizations, we were having to produce content consistently— writers, videographers, photographers, and designers— and had to figure out how to produce great content consistently. And so I started looking for ways to do that and was really struggling to find good conversations. This is like 2004, 2005. So this thing called podcasting was coming along. And so I started a podcast. I thought, I’m going to start my own conversation called The Accidental Creative. So in 2005, late 2005, launched this podcast, put out maybe 4 or 5 episodes just with some things we were trying that seemed to be working and just soliciting some ideas from other people. And I kind of forgot about it. And then I went back about 2 months later to look for podcasts to listen to. And there was a podcast called The Accidental Creative that was one of the top podcasts on iTunes. And I thought, oh no, I stole someone else’s idea. I can’t believe I didn’t check first. But it was my podcast and people had been discovering it. And I just realized I was not the only one struggling with how to be creative under pressure. And so the podcast continued to grow. As the story goes, I ended up being contacted by a literary agent who said, hey, these are some interesting ideas. Would you be interested in maybe writing a book about this? We pitched it to Portfolio, which is an imprint of Penguin Random House. And The Accidental Creative book released in 2011. And by that point, I had left and started my own business because I was getting invited to speak at these places and flying back and forth across the country to teach.

Drew McLellan [00:08:07]:

Sure.

Todd Henry [00:08:08]:

And then lead a creative strategy meeting the next morning. Not necessarily the best lifestyle for my family. So The Accidental Creative came out in 2011, fortunately did very well. And now for the last, I guess, 16 years, 15, 16 years, 17 years, I’ve been traveling all over the world teaching people about some of the dynamics of creating under pressure. And now I’m 7 books in and fortunately continue to get to write books and teach people and do those kinds of things. So that’s basically how I stumbled into this work, literally accidentally stumbled into doing this. I had no intention of doing this, but in kind of solving my own problem, I sort of backed my way into helping other people solve the same problem.

Drew McLellan [00:08:50]:

A little serendipitous. I like it. Yeah. So as you travel the globe and you’re talking to creatives, you know, one of the things, and you and I were talking before we hit the record button, you know, I came up through the agency business as a writer and somebody was always like, oh, it must be great to be a writer. And I was like, what? And I would always say, and, and you use this phrase, uh, as well, My job is to be creative on demand. Like, I don’t have the— I don’t have the luxury of waiting for a muse to show up. And, you know, I don’t get up at 3 in the morning and just write prose. Like, ad copy’s due on Tuesday or whatever it is that I’ve been assigned to do. And so it is a different muscle than the artistry of design or writing or, or even, you know, coding, which I think has its own artistry. So talk a little bit about sort of that pressure and how you And sort of, you know, through your series of books and the things that you’ve done, how you help folks sort of wrap their arms around that idea of your job is to be creative on demand.

Todd Henry [00:09:57]:

Right. Well, we call these people, you and I included, and most of the people listening, creative professionals. Right. Which to the outside world sounds like creative, but to us, we hear the word professional. There are 2 parts to that, right? There’s creative. Yay, I get to make things, I get to write, I get to use my talents in a unique way that inspires other people. That’s great. Professional. You’re a mercenary, basically. So you’re being paid to deliver a result. And—

Drew McLellan [00:10:22]:

Right.

Todd Henry [00:10:23]:

Sometimes you love the work that you do. Sometimes you make something and the client loves it. And at the end of the day, everybody’s happy. And you’re like, that was really fun. I really enjoyed that. And sometimes you kind of just have to crank it out and recognize that there’s a mercenary element of what you do. If you just want to be creative, Go make art. Nobody’s telling you you can’t do that. Just go on. Don’t expect that you’re gonna get paid for it, but like, you’re welcome to do that. Right?

Drew McLellan [00:10:50]:

Right.

Todd Henry [00:10:50]:

But the moment you choose to be a creative pro, you’re choosing to essentially leverage your talents, your perspective, your intuition, which is really the core element of what we really add in terms of value is our intuition.

Drew McLellan [00:11:04]:

Yeah.

Todd Henry [00:11:05]:

And choosing to do that for pay, which means you’re not always gonna get to do work you love. So we have to find ways of mining joy in our work. We have to find ways of creating magnetism and self-interest in our work. We can’t depend on the work to do that for us. It’s not always going to do that.

Drew McLellan [00:11:24]:

Yeah, right. You’re not always writing about a sexy product or a sexy company or, or something you have passion around. I mean, sometimes you’re writing about, you know, you know, a bank product or something like that, which you’re like, meh, okay. So you’re right, there has to be joy in the process and the output, not necessarily the topic of your creative endeavor.

Todd Henry [00:11:48]:

100%. And also it means you cannot look to your work as the sum total of creative fulfillment in your life.

Drew McLellan [00:11:55]:

Right.

Todd Henry [00:11:55]:

And so that was really kind of the beginning of what I was writing about in the 2000s was we need to build practices in our life. And what I observed is that the people in my life, I had people in my life who were creative directors who had directed like major international world music tours and people who were producing music videos for like, you know, these massive artists and people who had designed work that everybody has seen or encountered. And all of these people who are at the top of their game, who have been doing this for a period of time, they all had practices in their life that sustained them. They had a certain way they went about their work, a certain way they organized their work, a certain way that they found joy outside of the creative work, their on-demand work. They had other things they did to keep themselves creatively stoked, right?

Drew McLellan [00:12:40]:

Right.

Todd Henry [00:12:40]:

And so, when I talk about being a creative professional, what I mean is we have to recognize we have a portfolio of contribution in our life and our job is one element of that, but there are other things we need to do in our life to support our ambition if we want to be productive in that way. And that was kind of an eye-opening thing for me because I think a lot of people on the outside think Oh, you get to be creative for a living. That must be so fantastic.

Drew McLellan [00:13:05]:

Right, right. Like you’re sitting with a paint palette in your office, right?

Todd Henry [00:13:09]:

Exactly.

Drew McLellan [00:13:09]:

Yeah.

Todd Henry [00:13:10]:

Exactly. And so, we have to find ways of mining for joy in our life and in our work. And we have to find ways of defining victory that don’t look like loving what we do all day long, but instead becoming attached to outcomes, becoming attached to the value that we’re producing, or honestly, taking joy in the process where we had a really great idea. The client didn’t go for it, but how fun it was for us to concept this idea. And then in the end, you know, the product is the product and we fought for it and whatever. But at the end of the day, Right. we still found joy in the process. So those are some of the things that we have to do as professionals that I think people don’t account for. And that’s why a lot of, especially young talented people burn out in this profession. It’s because They think when they’re young and you have infinite energy, creativity’s like a spigot. You just turn it on and water comes out and you turn it off. But then at some point you hit the wall and you realize, oh, I don’t think I can sustain this for another 20, 30, 40 years. And that’s when you realize that the people who are long-term successful, they have those disciplines in their life to prepare them for the moments when they need to be brilliant.

Drew McLellan [00:14:19]:

Yeah. I always thought of it, it’s interesting. So as a writer, I’ve always written fiction on the side because that was my pure creative, which I, nobody had to approve. Nobody, I didn’t have to live inside a creative brief. Like I could just have that pure creative outlet, you know, on the side. So I could write, to your point, to be creative on demand and to have to check all the boxes in terms of what I was doing for my job and adding value there. And it didn’t define me as a writer, right? But it’s interesting, I’ve always thought of it a little bit like a marathon runner, right? You don’t just go out and run a marathon one day. You’re— you have the way you prep, you have the rehearsal time, if you will. You have the, you know, you’re running shorter sprints, the how you eat, how you sleep, all of that feeds your performance on the day of the race. And I think creatives have to have That as well. So let’s talk a little bit about some of the frameworks that you think help creative people. And I’m curious, I’ve always, I’ve always argued that everybody inside an agency, it has to be creative by demand. Like, I don’t care if it’s strategically creative. I don’t care if you’re in the creative department. I don’t care if you’re doing, you know, account service work, whatever it is. Even, even sales, I think, requires a creativity. All of us, I think, in the profession have to be creative on demand. So when you are talking to folks and helping them think about that framework and think about sort of those practices, walk us through a few of those.

Todd Henry [00:15:58]:

Yeah. And I think you just hit on an important point that creativity— we often conflate creativity and art, and this is often the case outside of the creative professions. You know, creativity is problem solving. At the end of the day, that’s what it is. So a designer solves problems by pushing pixels, to oversimplify it. A writer solves problems by going clickety-clack on the keyboard, right? Those are certainly creative acts, but it’s problem solving the same way a strategist solves problems by developing strategy, an entrepreneur, a business owner, an agency owner by identifying new opportunities in the market, right?

Drew McLellan [00:16:33]:

Right.

Todd Henry [00:16:33]:

And finding new niches maybe that they can. So, those are all creative acts. It’s not art. Creativity is problem solving. There’s a 5-part framework that I wrote about in The Accidental Creative. 5 areas where we can build what I call creative rhythm. These are supporting infrastructure. If we have ambition, we need infrastructure to support that ambition. And the infrastructure that I recommend is 5 parts: focus, relationships, energy, stimuli, and hours. So focus is really about defining the problems we’re trying to solve. There’s a bad habit we get into as creative pros where we throw ourselves into project work And we kind of stumble blindly toward a vague objective because our, our goal is to complete the project. But the reality is we don’t do projects, we solve problems as creative pros. And if we haven’t clearly defined the problem we’re trying to solve, we can spend days or weeks or sometimes even years working on something, and in the end we’ve solved the wrong problem.

Drew McLellan [00:17:33]:

Right.

Todd Henry [00:17:33]:

Because we were so focused on the project. We can succeed our way into failure. And so one of the core practices that I encourage every creative pro to do is every single day you should sit down and ask yourself, what problems am I solving today with my work? Whether you design or you write, or if you’re leading the agency or whatever it is, what problems am I actually solving today?

Drew McLellan [00:17:54]:

Right.

Todd Henry [00:17:54]:

What am I trying to resolve here rather than what projects am I doing? And then to communicate that clearly within the team to make sure that we all understand exactly what we’re trying to solve as opposed to the projects, the vague projects, because we can also be working in parallel on something with a completely different understanding of what we’re trying to accomplish if we haven’t clearly defined those problems.

Drew McLellan [00:18:15]:

Right.

Todd Henry [00:18:15]:

So, that’s really the first— the reason many of us feel stressed and anxious, whether as leaders or as team members, is because we don’t clearly understand exactly what we’re trying to do. The antidote to uncertainty, which all of us are experiencing right now, is not certainty. It’s clarity. What we need is not certainty of outcome. We need clarity to approach the problem in a way that is at least consistent with how everybody else is seeing the problem. So, clearly defining the problems, that’s just one area of focus, but it’s an important area of focus. The second is relationships. Many of us have relationships of obligation or convenience. We’re around a lot of people, but we’re not intentionally mining those relationships for insight. And so, I encourage people to build relationships in their life where they’re routinely asking important probing questions of other people. So, what are you working on? What’s inspiring you right now? What kinds of things are you reading? Let me share a few things that are inspiring me. You share a few things that are inspiring you. And then let’s have a conversation about how that applies to our work. This is really important. We need other people in order to see ourselves more effectively. But many people don’t do this, right?

Drew McLellan [00:19:27]:

Yeah.

Todd Henry [00:19:28]:

We just kind of exist in context with one another, but we’re not really engaging in relationships. So I would encourage people to seek out those kinds of relationships where you can have that kind of conversation and really challenge one another. I was speaking once at Air University, which is where senior Air Force officers go to receive training. These are combat-deployed officers, and they go back to receive training to become, you know, to go to higher levels of leadership in the Air Force. And one of the other speakers that day was a former 4-star Army Chief of Staff, General George Casey. And I was in the green room eating a blueberry muffin. General Casey comes up behind me. I don’t see him. He comes up behind me. I turn around and here’s this general standing right in my face. I think I spit a blueberry muffin all over his nice suit. I was so— It’s a little bit intimidating to be stared down by a general. But he said, Todd, what’s the most important thing I should know about creativity? And I was so, you know, outta my mind. I was like, creativity, good. You be creative, General. Right? But I didn’t have the presence of mind to say, what’s the most important thing I should know about leadership? And without batting an eye, he came back and said, you need people in your life to speak truth to you before you realize you need people in your life to speak truth to you. By the time you realize you need them, it’s already too late. So on this relationship—

Drew McLellan [00:20:44]:

Interesting.

Todd Henry [00:20:44]:

Front, my challenge to agency leaders who are listening to this is who in your life is willing to speak truth to you? Have you given permission to people to say, hey, that client, I know it could be a nice book of business, that is not a client we want to take on because that’s going to absorb so much of our time, our focus, our energy.

Drew McLellan [00:21:03]:

Yeah.

Todd Henry [00:21:04]:

That we’re not going to be able to serve our other, or whatever it is. But who, or, hey, the way you led that meeting, that was completely inappropriate. Or the way you led that meeting, you need to lean in more. You need to push more. You really need to challenge, like you’re going with the flow too much. You know, You need more edge to what you do. Who in your life is speaking truth to you? So, that’s the relationship angle. Energy. So, focus, relationships, energy. Energy management is about preserving our emotional labor for the work, our ability, because creative work requires not just physical time, but also emotional labor, discretionary energy we could put into it. So, my challenge for leaders is to look at your calendar, look at your commitments, look at everything going on in your life, and ask yourself what good thing Do I need to prune from my life, from my expectations, so something better can be born in its place? Not the bad things. Those are easy to prune. But there’s probably something you’re doing that’s like just good enough to keep around, but probably not good enough that it should be occupying your energy. So what good thing needs to go away? It could be a meeting. It could be a client. It could be a project. It could be a relationship. Maybe you need to say, you know what? I need to not be having coffee with that person every 2 weeks. Like, that is a net energy drain, and I just need to have a different conversation. So, energy is the third area. The fourth area is stimuli. These are all the things that go into our head that inspire our process. But many of us are less than discerning, Drew, believe it or not, less than discerning about the kinds of things we allow into our mind, right? We get sucked into the algorithmic feed and whatever. We have to be purposeful.

Drew McLellan [00:22:40]:

We’re watching whatever show everybody else is watching and talking about, for example.

Todd Henry [00:22:45]:

Exactly.

Drew McLellan [00:22:46]:

Yeah.

Todd Henry [00:22:46]:

Or we’re not reading with intent. We’re not reading things with a question in mind, asking ourselves, how does this apply to what I’m doing? What if I were to try to take this and apply it to what I’m doing right now or to the work I’m doing, my relationships, or to the context of my work? And so, we need to— I encourage people to have a study plan. So, are you— I use a tool called Reader, Readwise Reader, where I just throw every interesting thing I come across. And then, when I’m on a plane or when I’m, you know, in the morning, I have an hour set aside for study and and thought and reading and writing, I’ll just kind of work through that queue and I’ll just read things. And some of them, I’ll, you know, when I get to them, I’m like, yeah, okay, I’m not really— okay, that was right.

Drew McLellan [00:23:26]:

Right.

Todd Henry [00:23:26]:

Yeah, I shouldn’t have thought— oh, by the way, your dog in the background is adorable. Sorry, I just saw your dog. Yeah.

Drew McLellan [00:23:31]:

There’s always a dog in the background at the McClellan house.

Todd Henry [00:23:35]:

Yeah. You know, but we need to have that. But also, we need to take better notes. And what I mean by this is most of our notes are facts and figures. And Bob said this and Julie said that.

Drew McLellan [00:23:46]:

Yeah.

Todd Henry [00:23:46]:

And we’re not paying attention to the hunches inside our head. And so, I carry one of these little notebooks around with me everywhere I go, and I’m just constantly writing down any fragment of something that comes across my mind, even if it seems irrelevant, because we need to pay attention to the stimulus in our environment and how it’s inspiring us. Our mind’s constantly working in the background. So, focus, relationships, energy, stimuli, finally, hours.

Drew McLellan [00:24:08]:

So, Hank, before we get to hours, so, 2 comments. I think it’s important, and I’m curious what you think, to have input from a lot of places. One of the things that I always thought as a creative inside an agency is I never knew what I would need to know, right? Like, because you are, you are writing about products and services or you’re creating around what your clients sell, but the creative energy could come from a fact from nature or something else. And so I always, I always thought that it was important for us to have a varied menu of things. So we’re not just news scrolling, we’re not just watching, you know, the whatever the latest Game of Thrones is. We also have other resources that seem disparate and odd, but sort of fill you up with very different points of view and, and from different aspects of life. So how would in your feed, how do you keep that feed interesting and filled with variety?

Todd Henry [00:25:14]:

It is a constant battle because, A, there is more stuff being thrown at us than ever before. And also, I think more stuff of dubious quality because there are no gatekeepers. So there was a time when you could pretty reliably walk into a bookstore and pick any book off the shelf, and it’s going to be valuable in some way because there was a gatekeeper. Right?

Drew McLellan [00:25:37]:

Right, right.

Todd Henry [00:25:37]:

That sort of helped gatekeep that content. I mean, now it’s really like kind of a crapshoot as to whether something is going to be reliable and valuable or just kind of a rehash. And so I think that’s part of the challenge. So I have a select group of trusted voices who are contemporaries who I read everything that they write. I read everything that they put out. I watch every video they make, mostly because I trust them. I trust their insight. I trust their intuition. So, that’s part of it. Also, I go back to original sources a lot. I like to read books that are decades or centuries old because I find that the language makes me work a little harder sometimes. And one of my favorite writers is kind of a bizarre pick, but one of my favorite writers is a guy named Thomas Merton, who was a mid-20th century mystic and a monk. He lived as a hermit outside of a an abbey in Gethsemane called Gethsemane outside Louisville, Kentucky. So, he’s a Catholic writer, but he’s writing some of the most profound things about human identity and about, I mean, frankly, like some insights that have been so relevant to business decisions. And so, even reading things like that that seem really out of left field, my encouragement to people is—

Drew McLellan [00:26:57]:

Yeah.

Todd Henry [00:26:57]:

read what’s helpful to you. Don’t read because you feel like you have to. Read what’s helpful to you. Read what sparks you. Read what inspires you. I agree, read broadly and deeply, and also look outside of your area of expertise.

Drew McLellan [00:27:08]:

Right.

Todd Henry [00:27:08]:

So, one of my former colleagues, videography was his core discipline. So, he made videos, directed videos as a creative director, ended up along with Willie Williams, like creative directed U2’s, like 2 of U2’s world tours. But he only read fiction for inspiration for his videos. He never looked at other videos to see what other people were doing. He read fiction and the theater of his mind would be active, and that’s where he got ideas for his videos. And so I would encourage people also, if you want to make work that’s unlike anybody else’s work, you need to go to places nobody else is going for inspiration, for stimulus. Christopher Nolan does this. Everybody’s talking about The Odyssey right now. Christopher Nolan’s not sitting down watching film for inspiration. He’ll talk about that. He’ll talk about where His ideas come from literature. His ideas come from other places. And he tries very hard to remove himself from the zeitgeist, right, of what’s going on. And instead, just to immerse himself in an analog world. Like, he doesn’t have a cell phone.

Drew McLellan [00:28:11]:

That’s crazy.

Todd Henry [00:28:13]:

Yeah. Like, he has a— I think he has a flip phone maybe, but like, you have to call his assistant, who’s— and his assistant will say, you’re meeting Christopher at this coffee shop on this corner at 8:00 AM tomorrow morning. And like, there’s no way to change those plans. Like, if something goes awry, it’s like, that’s what’s But I think there’s something— it’s difficult to do that. And that’s probably a little bit extreme. You’re not going to be Christopher Nolan by doing that. That’s a little bit extreme. But there’s some ethic there that I think is—

Drew McLellan [00:28:43]:

But you could add some aspect of that into your life, right? 100%. Yes. And I know you think of it kind of as hunting trails. Something I read that you wrote was you need to have places of predictable inspiration. And that’s for you, like certain authors that you keep going back to. And I think that is important. for all of us, again, to your point, authors that we can trust, that they’re going to be thought-provoking in some way. And a lot of those are our contemporaries. You don’t have to go back in literature to do that.

Todd Henry [00:29:11]:

100%.

Drew McLellan [00:29:11]:

So you talked about writing in your notebook, which a lot of folks that I know do. How do you use that notebook?

Todd Henry [00:29:20]:

Yeah. So I have— I use it for—

Drew McLellan [00:29:22]:

The notebooks. I’m sure you have multiple notebooks at this point, right?

Todd Henry [00:29:26]:

I do. I do. Yeah. So this is the pull, right? The challenge is Digital tools are so useful, so easy. My calendar has to be digital because Drew sends me an invite for a podcast interview. If I write it down on a paper calendar, I’m probably going to forget.

Drew McLellan [00:29:42]:

Right.

Todd Henry [00:29:42]:

So, there are some tools that just digital has made everything better. I keep my master to-do list digitally. I use a tool called Todoist. What I use notebooks for is process, process writing. So, There’s something, and I’ve gone back and forth, like journaling digitally, journaling analog, writing ideas down digitally, writing ideas down analog. There’s something about the time and the process that’s necessary when you’re doing things in an analog format that allows your mind, it’s the space between the words, it’s the space between the thoughts that it’s, it’s, I just put a podcast episode out today called The Long Moment. It’s what I call staying in the long moment.

Drew McLellan [00:30:27]:

Yeah.

Todd Henry [00:30:28]:

We are in a world where we’re being increasingly forced into short moments.

Drew McLellan [00:30:32]:

Yeah. Fragments. Lots of fragments.

Todd Henry [00:30:35]:

Yeah. I did an interview in February for the podcast with a guy named Peter Schmidt who wrote a book called Attensity, and he calls it human fracking. We are in a world of human fracking where they are just like you frack for oil and natural gas, right? Like they’re pumping liquid into our minds and trying to frack out the little bits of attention, like 8 seconds at a time or 2 seconds at a time. And I think the net result of that is we never stay in the long moment for ideas to emerge.

Drew McLellan [00:31:04]:

Yeah, you don’t give them time to kind of bake and kind of crawl out of that sort of abyss of, like, pieces to actually be something.

Todd Henry [00:31:15]:

Yeah. And that’s one of my concerns. And we don’t need to get into AI, but one of my concerns with AI is, I mean, you and I have been around long enough where if you wanted inspiration, you would go to the library or you’d play communication archetypes. Or you would pull out— there are these books that you would— Yeah.

Drew McLellan [00:31:30]:

Don’t you remember sitting at the conference room and you’d have all these reference books and you’d have a thesaurus of communication arts and you’d have art books and things like that, and you’d be flipping through them and just sort of riffing off of these images or words that you were seeing, which is not how we create today.

Todd Henry [00:31:48]:

That’s right. And we could call that the long moment, right? It’s these long periods of sustained attention where you’re thinking about a problem and you’re absorbing stimulus and you’re trying to figure out the connecting fissures, the tethers between different ideas.

Drew McLellan [00:32:04]:

Yeah, right.

Todd Henry [00:32:04]:

And so that’s what I use notebooks for. I journal by hand. And the reason I do that is because I often surprise myself, like ideas emerge. I can type much faster than I can handwrite. And so it forces me to slow down. There’s something about the friction too of pen on paper and just the tactile nature of that. So, that’s part of the reason why I do that is for those purposes. It’s the same reason why I go for long walks in the middle of the day often, and I only listen to instrumental music in the background. It’s to force me to be in the long moment. And then, I carry these little notebooks with me. You can see I have a couple highlighted ideas here. Things will just pop into my head and I’ll just write them down. I don’t always know what they mean, but some of my books, some of the core concepts from my books have come out of those walks where I’ve been absorbing a lot of things and research and reading and interviewing people and all these things. And then suddenly, click, things come together. But they only come together— it’s— Steven Johnson calls it a slow hunch, right? They only come together if you give the sustained time and attention necessary for—

Drew McLellan [00:33:08]:

Right.

Todd Henry [00:33:08]:

In the long moment for these things to coalesce. And so a lot of us never get— we have all the working pieces, but we never get to the deep insight. We never know what’s on our mind because we’re never alone with our thoughts. And so, we just have to stay in the long moment long enough. And so, that’s my encouragement for people is— and so, I did an engagement for Ford Motor Company for their design function late last year. And I was talking about how creativity is inefficient, but it doesn’t waste anything. Meaning, there are a lot of things that look inefficient, but in reality, they’re all part of the process that gets you to the result.

Drew McLellan [00:33:48]:

Right.

Todd Henry [00:33:50]:

this brilliant person, she was the chief of staff to the global head of design, said, it’s not inefficiency, it’s invisible efficiency. And I thought, I love that phrase. And it’s true.

Drew McLellan [00:34:02]:

Interesting.

Todd Henry [00:34:02]:

Yeah. There are so many invisibly efficient parts of the creative process because you’re not building a wall, which is what organizations want to do. They want you to take a brick, put it in, you know, slab, take a brick, put it in, slab, take a brick, put it in. That’s what they want you to do. But you’re not building a wall, you’re building a neural network. And that is organic and it takes time. Yeah. And it’s invisibly efficient. It’s efficient in the end run, but it’s invisibly efficient because it looks like inefficiency in the short run, but in the long run it creates a more durable value. So that’s what we have to do. Like we have to be willing to, as leaders especially, embrace the invisible efficiency of the creative process and give people the space to do the things that will lead to that long-term durable value.

Drew McLellan [00:34:43]:

Yeah. All right. Before you tell us about the 5th one, let’s take a quick break and then we’ll come back and we’ll wrap up this framework that you’re talking about.

Todd Henry [00:34:51]:

about.

Drew McLellan [00:34:51]:

Your account people are fine. They get the job done, and yet you know they are capable of so much more for you, your clients, and your agency. AMI’s Advanced AE Bootcamp is built for seasoned account staff who already know the basics and are ready to step into true trusted advisor territory. We will push them beyond order taking into strategy, growth, and real C-suite conversations, strengthening client relationships Expanding existing revenue and protecting your margins by having smarter, more confident AEs at the table. If you want your mid to senior level account team to drive bigger, more profitable engagements, send them to our Advanced AE Bootcamp on September 23rd and 24th and find all the details and register at the Agency Management Institute website. All right. We are back with Todd Henry and we’re talking about creativity in our work and how we, how we show up as creative people, how we prepare to be creative people, which, you know, if you’re listening to this podcast, you’re a creative person. I don’t care what your job title is. I don’t care what you do all day. I don’t care if you’re a, you’re the spreadsheet person at the agency, you’re the CFO, you still have to be creative. And as we said earlier in the episode, what we really mean by that is that you’re a problem solver and you use whatever your gifts and tools are.

Todd Henry [00:36:19]:

Yeah.

Drew McLellan [00:36:20]:

Right? Some people it’s words, some people it’s pixels, some people it’s Excel, whatever it is, whatever, whatever your canvas of choice is based on your skillset, you have to be creative on demand all the time. All right. So Todd, what was the 5th of that framework you were walking us through?

Todd Henry [00:36:35]:

So the 5th, so we have focus, relationships, energy, stimuli, hours is the 5th one. Hours, which is how we leverage our time. But most of us think about time in terms of efficiency. Not in terms of effectiveness. So, we think about how we can get more done in less time.

Drew McLellan [00:36:50]:

Right.

Todd Henry [00:36:50]:

But the reality is there’s some things we have to do, sort of like we were talking about invisible efficiency. We have to do them in order to position ourselves to be prepared for upcoming challenges. So, we’ve already talked about going outside of your core discipline to learn new skills, to build resilience.

Drew McLellan [00:37:08]:

Yeah.

Todd Henry [00:37:09]:

There’s something I call unnecessary creating. I wrote about this in The Accidental Creative. Unnecessary creating is work that you do, creative work that you do that nobody’s paying you for. Nobody’s looking over your shoulder and judging. You are doing it purely for— to rediscover the sheer joy of creating or making things. And sometimes it’s good to do that, you know, because a lot of us, we get into what we do. I’m sure you drew— like, you love to write and you thought, wow, this is great. Now I get to get— I get paid for writing. That’s amazing. But over time, it becomes more about the getting paid part than it does about the writing part, right? Right.

Drew McLellan [00:37:44]:

Or you’re not writing what you want to write. You’re writing what what you’re being asked to write, right?

Todd Henry [00:37:49]:

Exactly. And so, it’s important that we have some space in our life as part of our portfolio that is developing new skills or writing or creating in a way that allows us to take risks, to try things, to develop skills, to grow, and just reconnect with our first love that we’re not getting paid for, that nobody’s looking at. It’s just purely for us. And so, there was a time when music was the way I made a living, right? Now I don’t make a living through music, so music is kind of my unnecessary creating.

Drew McLellan [00:38:18]:

Um, I was just gonna say, a lot of people, their unnecessary creating isn’t the same thing they do for a living. Like, like, I think about agency owners who are amazing chefs or photographers, or again, being very creative, but not in the, not in the, in the bowling lane that they spend their time in all day, every day. So for you, Yes, you’re speaking and you’re writing, but your music is still a creative outlet for you that, as you were saying, is purely for the joy of doing it, right?

Todd Henry [00:38:52]:

That’s right. And the funny thing is, at one point there was a time when I was like, oh, if I have to pick up one more guitar, right? Because it’s like that was how I was making my living. Or, oh, if I have to play a show for, you know, 300 drunk people one more time or whatever.

Drew McLellan [00:39:07]:

Right.

Todd Henry [00:39:07]:

And now it’s like that’s That’s sort of the joy for me. Whereas the writing part feels more like, and at that, again, the funny part is like I was writing and creating podcasts and doing things as like a sideline fun project. And now that’s like the core of my—

Drew McLellan [00:39:23]:

Yeah.

Todd Henry [00:39:24]:

My work, right? So we always have to be aware of how our professional life is impacting our creating. So my encouragement, my challenge, like you said, I know a lot of creative directors who garden. I know music producers who woodwork. Think about what are some ways that I could feed, like it scratched my creative itch that aren’t inside my core profession where I can develop new skills. I can develop a new perspective on my work, become more resilient, honestly, like creatively resilient. Because as you exercise different forms of creativity, you begin to, it improves your intuition and hones your senses for your core area of creativity.

Drew McLellan [00:40:05]:

Yeah.

Todd Henry [00:40:05]:

Your core craft, right? It makes you better at your core craft. So that would be one area that I would encourage people to think about. So focus, relationships, and energy, stimuli, hours. They awkwardly spell the word fresh. Not my idea. That was my editor at Penguin Random House. Because originally hours was time and he was like, right now you have frest and frest is not very good. I’m like, okay. Right.

Drew McLellan [00:40:24]:

That’s harder to remember, right?

Todd Henry [00:40:26]:

Right. Yeah.

Drew McLellan [00:40:27]:

So for a lot of people, one of the things that I love about agency life is how collaborative it is, but it’s also challenging because most of us in our work are not creative in a vacuum. We are collectively creative. We have to do that together. So again, account service people have to write creative briefs and have to help the creatives find the problem they’re solving. Art directors and writers need to work together. Again, today, you know, digital designers. So talk a little bit about sort of that kind of a creative process, especially if you’re leading a department or you’re leading the agency. Most of the listeners that are with us today are people who are running agencies. So they probably feel like one of the things they had to give up in a lot of ways was many of them grew up as a writer or an art director or something like that, and they don’t get to practice that craft anymore. But we have to be able to inspire people to be creative. Talk a little bit about how you see the role of leading creativity inside a for-profit business like an agency?

Todd Henry [00:41:41]:

Yeah, so leading and leading the work and doing the work are fundamentally different things, right? And I think this is something people don’t often account for is the fact that not everybody should be a leader. Not everybody, right? There are people who probably are leading who probably should go back to being a practitioner because if you are not about the people on your team, if that’s not the core of what you wake up every day thinking like, how can I empower the people on my team to do better work, to be better positioned to add value, you know, then you’re, you’re not fulfilling a core function of your job as a leader. Now, most people in, especially in agency world, especially in small agency world, are not pure makers or pure managers. They’re what you could call a makager, right? Because some of them still probably have one foot in the work, but no doubt, yeah, one foot in the management. So that, that gets a little bit tricky. But in, in Herding Tigers, uh, my book about leadership, I talked about the 2 core things that every talented, ambitious people need. First thing is stability, which means clarity. So, we need clarity of process, clarity of expectations, clarity of relationship. We need to know very clearly where the boundaries are, what the expectations are, where we’re headed, and very precisely what’s expected of me. But the second thing talented, ambitious people need is challenge. Talented, ambitious people want to be pushed. They want to try new things. They want to experiment. And the problem with stability and challenge is that they exist in tension with one another. So a lot of organizations err on one side or the other. So either a manager is overly clear, the ground is overly stable, and talented, ambitious people think like, I mean, why did I sign up for this role if you’re just going to tell me what to do?

Drew McLellan [00:43:23]:

Right.

Todd Henry [00:43:23]:

Like, I want to be challenged. I want to take risks. I want to apply my skills. Or, and this is more often the case, overly challenged without the stability, the time, the resources, the clarity of expectations necessary to do the work. So they feel anxious all the time. I’m constantly juggling. And this is especially true in agency world because we get pulled into the chaos of our clients’ world as well.

Drew McLellan [00:43:47]:

Right.

Todd Henry [00:43:47]:

So if the clients are disorganized and unstable, that can sometimes destabilize us. So one of the core roles for, I believe, for agency leaders is to create stability and challenge within the organization and to stand in the gap and to protect the organization from whatever’s going on in the end client world. Hey, you know, we want to be clear about our process. We want to be clear about how we approach the work, but we’re not going to get pulled into having like 7 different people in your organization offering feedback about something.

Drew McLellan [00:44:21]:

Yeah, independently, right? Right.

Todd Henry [00:44:23]:

Independently, right? That, by the way, is all in conflict with one another, right?

Drew McLellan [00:44:28]:

Naturally, of course.

Todd Henry [00:44:29]:

Yes. We are going to very clearly define the scope of the work and the problem we’re solving. And we’re going to do that in one meeting with us together, and we’re going to define that together. We’re not going to have 7 voices speaking into the problem and end up with a Frankenmonster that we’re trying to solve. So, a big chunk of what we do is agency leaders especially is air coverage. It’s providing air coverage for the ground troops, ensuring that we’re providing that stability and challenge. But that also means we have to be mindful of— we kind of own 3 things. We own culture, we own talent, and then ultimately the work. We tend to think we only own the work, but we also own the culture, which means how we interact with one another.

Drew McLellan [00:45:10]:

Right.

Todd Henry [00:45:10]:

Expectations for how conflict gets resolved. We have to ensure that things like ‘Cause you don’t build a culture, you grow a culture. Things like what I call ghost rules don’t emerge in the organization. This is something that happens over time. Ghost rules are these invisible narratives like, that’ll never work around here, or they’ll never go for that, or that’s not the way we do things. Well, sometimes these are just invisible narratives that creep in and we have to be on guard against those and prune them whenever we see them. Or normalizing deviant behavior. Not deviant, there probably aren’t deviants in your organization, but normalizing deviant behavior. that’s deviant from the norm. Because sometimes, especially in small agency world, we’re dependent on the talent, the rainmakers, the people who, you know, basically provide all the value for the clients. And sometimes those people, you know, don’t behave in a way that is—

Drew McLellan [00:46:04]:

Yeah, they color outside the lines a little bit, right?

Todd Henry [00:46:08]:

Exactly, they do. And sometimes that leads to a, like a, you know, maybe some unhealthy behavior or the insecurity that’s involved in doing creative work sort of gets the better of them and they begin to act like a diva or something like that.

Drew McLellan [00:46:20]:

Right.

Todd Henry [00:46:20]:

And we have to make sure that we’re enforcing culture consistently across the board, regardless of who is on the team and regardless of their value to the team.

Drew McLellan [00:46:31]:

Yeah.

Todd Henry [00:46:31]:

And that can be really difficult because what happens when we tacitly permit behavior that we know is destructive to the culture? We’re basically sending a signal to everybody else that, yeah, what you did, what you do doesn’t really matter. That’s the only important person in the organization.

Drew McLellan [00:46:46]:

Yeah.

Todd Henry [00:46:46]:

So we’re gonna bend ourselves around them. We’re gonna have different rules for, for this person than that person. So these are examples of the kinds of things we need to be mindful of, but primarily as a diagnostic tool, I encourage people to think about stability and challenge and ask yourself, as you look at your team, where is there instability? Where am I not being clear about expectations, about timelines? Where am I not providing resources for my team that they need to be able to do their work? So am I providing the stability that they need? And are the people on my team challenged? Are they growing? Are they doing work that they’re excited about, that they’re enthused about presenting? Am I giving them space to come up with ideas, to take risks, to try things? Am I creating enough space at the beginning of the process that we can actually get some of those maybe kind of crazy out-of-bounds ideas into the process to at least talk about them? Or am I forcing the funnel To narrow too quickly to where we don’t have time to talk about that. Let’s just sort of aim down the middle and—

Drew McLellan [00:47:46]:

Yeah. Let’s go with the safe answer and be done with it, right?

Todd Henry [00:47:49]:

Exactly. Yeah. So, all of that is part of the Stability Challenge thing. It’s really a great diagnostic tool for leaders to figure out where their team might be.

Drew McLellan [00:47:57]:

One of the challenges as I was prepping for our conversation today is your body of work. I could talk to you for 2 hours about every book that you’ve written. So, we haven’t even mentioned the new book, which is The Brave Habit. But I think we are in a moment as agency owners and leaders and even folks inside the agency, we’re brave. We have to be brave or we’re gonna be, um, homogenized and look like everybody else. And that has to do with AI and economic pressures and all kinds of things. But talk a little bit about what, what prompted you to write a book about bravery. And when you talk about bravery, what do you mean?

Todd Henry [00:48:37]:

So I think we often conflate bravery with heroism. We think about people rushing into burning buildings or rescuing people from the ocean.

Drew McLellan [00:48:46]:

Yeah, to save the kittens, right?

Todd Henry [00:48:47]:

Yeah, exactly. And certainly that is brave when people act heroically. But I think we often discount everyday acts of bravery, things that people do that might cost them something, but that create value for the world. And so when I define bravery, I define it as integrity under pressure. Bravery is basically doing under pressure the thing that you say you would do when you’re not under pressure, right? And we love to talk a big game. We love to talk about our corporate values. We love to talk about our culture and what we value and what we instill. But then when we’re under pressure, whether it’s economic pressure or pressure from a client or whatever, we compromise those values. Or when we’re under pressure, we don’t have the hard conversation. We don’t share the the potentially edgy, dangerous idea, right?

Drew McLellan [00:49:32]:

Right.

Todd Henry [00:49:33]:

And so, really, my encouragement in this book is just to make bravery a habit in your life. Similar to all my other work, there are 2 core things I discovered that tend to be present in situations where people make brave decisions. The first is an optimistic vision of the future versus a pessimistic vision. So, most people aren’t going to act bravely if they don’t see a clear vision that they’re navigating toward. Why would they? Why would I throw myself on the altar if there’s nothing I’m moving towards, right?

Drew McLellan [00:50:03]:

Right.

Todd Henry [00:50:03]:

The second thing is a sense of agency versus a sense of powerlessness. So, as leaders, we need to be reinforcing the vision, consistently reinforcing an optimistic vision about here’s where we’re going, here’s why we’re going there, here’s what it’s going to look like when we get there. And we need to be speaking agency into the people on our team. Here’s how you can help us get there. Here’s how you— I can contribute to this optimistic vision.

Drew McLellan [00:50:26]:

Yeah. We actually have some influence and control, or we, we actually can solve this problem or cross the chasm or whatever it is. Like, we can do this. Yeah.

Todd Henry [00:50:39]:

Yeah. Um, bravery is, by the way, not bravado. Uh, bravery is also not stupid risk. Um, you know, some people talk about brave, like they were so brave to jump off that cliff trusting they could build wings on the way down. No, that’s, that’s not bravery. That’s stupidity, right?

Drew McLellan [00:50:54]:

Right, right.

Todd Henry [00:50:54]:

Bravery understands the cost, calculates the cost, but acts anyway, knows that there could be a cost, but acts anyway. And so that’s really when I’m talking about bravery. And you’re right, now is the time for brave voices in the marketplace. We’re— everybody who does agency work is in danger of being commoditized because the marketplace will settle for mediocrity. It just, it will. Like, like we will go through a long season where everything is the same and it’s cheap. And so clients are happy because it’s cheap. And that’s really all that the private equity cares about is that whatever creative they’re buying is cheap, right?

Drew McLellan [00:51:33]:

Yep.

Todd Henry [00:51:33]:

But we all know that there’s something worth fighting for here. And we all know that in the long run, it’s better for clients to have standout work. It doesn’t have to be world-changing work, but it has to stand apart. There has to be a human element, human intuition involved. Because people sense that, they know that, and it definitely changes the way they attach to a brand or they attach to an idea or a concept. And so we have to be brave enough to be pushing our clients not out of self-preservation, but we have to be painting an optimistic vision for them of here’s what yes AI empowered but human driven work can look like because yes we’ll capture some efficiencies by using AI early in the process, we’ll iterate faster, we’ll whatever do. Maybe present concepts faster, whatever, using AI. But the final product needs to be human-driven because there is a difference. There’s an authenticity layer. There’s a patina of authenticity on human-driven work that frankly just is not— and it’s almost, you almost can’t set, you sense it, but you can’t necessarily define it, but you know it when you see it, right?

Drew McLellan [00:52:42]:

You know, I was having a conversation with somebody the other day and we were talking about this topic. And he used a phrase which I thought was really great, was that without the human intervention, there is no taste or discernment.

Todd Henry [00:52:54]:

Right.

Drew McLellan [00:52:55]:

And I think about so much of our work is around that, that discernment of this will land or this will connect with the audience or this will be meaningful to them. And that’s today part of the value that we continue. I think we’ve always brought that as agency folks to our work, but it’s more important than ever if we’re gonna be using tools to help us get part of the way there.

Todd Henry [00:53:20]:

Yeah. And I use 2 French words to describe this. I use the word malaise, which is where a lot of us are. Malaise is a bad comfort, right? It’s kind of like, yeah, I’m cranking out the work, but I’m using AI to do it and I’m not really doing the work. I’m just kind of— it’s like a very bad— it’s like bad comfort. It’s very comfortable, but it just kind of makes you feel blah, right? What I’m encouraging people to work with is verve.

Drew McLellan [00:53:44]:

Yeah, which is a great word.

Todd Henry [00:53:47]:

Old-timey word, but makes you think of like Jack LaLanne and calisthenics or whatever. But nerve is desire, it’s risk, it’s belief. AI doesn’t desire anything. It doesn’t aspire to anything. There’s no concept of risk. AI doesn’t understand risk. I mean, it can postulate or it can elaborate on the theories of risk, but it doesn’t really understand what it means means when something might cost you, right?

Drew McLellan [00:54:13]:

Right.

Todd Henry [00:54:13]:

Uh, and then belief. AI doesn’t believe in anything, you know, but humans do. Humans aspire. Humans can envision the impossible and then work toward it and maybe fail, and in the process realize that was a worthy endeavor even though we failed.

Drew McLellan [00:54:28]:

Yeah.

Todd Henry [00:54:29]:

And so my encouragement to people is to work with verve. And of course, verve has a meaning in and of its own, like, is my voice reflected? Do they embrace the effort necessary to do this work? Can I take responsibility for the process? Did I— was it my verdict, or did I let AI make the decision? And then did I evolve? Did I grow through doing this work? But I think if we just agree we’re gonna, we’re gonna do our work with verve, and we’re not going to use AI as a device to replace our capacity, but as an instrument to augment our human capacity to do things we can imagine but can’t do on our own, I think that’s when the world could get really exciting.

Drew McLellan [00:55:06]:

Yeah.

Todd Henry [00:55:06]:

If we use AI as a device to replace our capacity, I think that’s a pretty bleak and dark world. And unfortunately, that’s the one that economic pressure will push us toward.

Drew McLellan [00:55:16]:

Right.

Todd Henry [00:55:17]:

So we have, we need brave people to stand in the gap and say, no, we are going to embrace our work with verve and we’re going to push our clients to embrace that human edge, that human patina that will make things resonate so deeply with our audience, even if our audience can’t define why.

Drew McLellan [00:55:33]:

Yeah, yeah. I, I actually think this is a really exciting time to be in the agency business. I think it is a time of— I think it’s a new renaissance for us. I think we have new tools to create and grow. And but you’re right, it, it is meaningless if it’s done in the artificial vacuum and we don’t bring our humanity to it. And so there is probably no better time for us to step up and be brave. You’re absolutely right.

Todd Henry [00:56:01]:

Yeah. And, and we each need to define what that means for ourselves.

Drew McLellan [00:56:04]:

Right.

Todd Henry [00:56:05]:

Also, that’s what’s tricky about it. It’s like there’s no clear answer here. That’s why, you know, again, clarity versus certainty. Like nobody’s certain where things are gonna go, but we at least need— No.

Drew McLellan [00:56:13]:

Right.

Todd Henry [00:56:14]:

Like maybe one of the bravest things, and I have a, a little group called Creative Leader Roundtable, and one of the agency owners in that group said that they have an AI ethic, they have an AI framework that they, they go to clients and they’re like, hey, here’s how we use AI. If you’re, if you’re good with that, great.

Drew McLellan [00:56:29]:

If you’re not okay with that, we’re probably not probably not going to be a good fit, right?

Todd Henry [00:56:32]:

Because—

Drew McLellan [00:56:32]:

Yeah, because I’m sure part of it is, here’s how we do use it, and here’s how we’re not going to use it.

Todd Henry [00:56:37]:

That’s exactly right. Yeah, that’s exactly right. So like, we won’t use AI just to crank out a— somebody in our group said, said somebody called it a monster truck flyer. And now they just can’t get that out. Like, we’re not going to use AI to crank out a monster truck flyer for you, right? Like, right. And now every time I see something AI generated, like, that’s all I can think of is like, oh, That looks like a monster truck rally flyer, right? But we will use it to make our process faster. We will use it to remove the friction that’s in the way of the work, but we won’t use it to remove the friction that is the work because that’s what makes the work human.

Drew McLellan [00:57:09]:

Yeah. It’s also what makes the work fun, right? I mean, I think at the end of the day, that’s— and that maybe this is the perfect note to, to wrap our conversation around, but that’s why we do this. That again, regardless of your role inside an agency, we do it because solving problems and being creative in those problems that we resolve is fun. It’s challenging, it’s fresh. And that even though you have to be creative on demand, that you get to do that every day is a privilege that we should not give up quickly.

Todd Henry [00:57:42]:

100%. And also it’s identity-forming. And I know people say, you are not your work. And I agree with that on a certain level, but also that’s a little bit reductive because when you do creative work, you’re putting your intuition, you’re putting your values, your discernment, your taste, your judgment, you’re putting those into the work. So your work is a reflection of who you are. It’s a reflection of your identity, of your sense of being. And so, yeah, when we use another tool to just replace that sense of being, we’re also not becoming. Like, we’re not growing. We’re not doing the thing that humans do, which is to learn and adapt and grow and evolve and become better at what we do. And so there’s so much of that that’s all wrapped up in this moment where we’re really at this sort of like hockey stick inflection And my hope is that people will be brave enough to say, if we’re not as efficient as everybody else, that’s a risk I’m willing to take because I think there are things more important, like doing work that we’re deeply connected to that expresses who we are and what we value. And I’m hopeful that there’ll be people who will take up that mantle.

Drew McLellan [00:58:45]:

Yeah. So this has been a great conversation. I, like I said, I, as I was prepping, I was like, oh my God, I’m never going to get all this in in an hour. But thank you for being on the show. If folks want If they wanna follow you, if they wanna learn more about your work, if they wanna hear about this roundtable, if they wanna find the books, what’s the best way for them to connect with you?

Todd Henry [00:59:06]:

Yeah, toddhenry.com is kind of home base and you can find my podcast. Again, I’ve been podcasting every week for 20 years, so you can find, uh, although we did get rid of the back catalog and completely reinvent last year, so we’re only on back up to episode 120 or something at this point. But, um, Daily Creative is the podcast and then my books are anywhere books are sold and creativeleader.net. That’s Creative Leader Roundtable. If you’re a leader of a creative team and you just wanna have conversations about how to approach that work more meaningfully, um, from a creative perspective, cuz I know Drew, you’re focused a lot on the business side of it, right? We focus really on the kind of the creative leadership side of it. Just check it out at creativeleader.net and you can learn more.

Drew McLellan [00:59:43]:

This has been awesome. Thank you so much for being on the show and for challenging us to think about our work so deeply. I think that’s what I love about your writing is that it, it really makes you think about the importance of your work and the value you bring to the world by tapping into your creativity. So thank you for your— thanks for keeping us honest about what we do. I appreciate it.

Todd Henry [01:00:07]:

Thanks. And thanks for the great work that you do and the really, really important work that you do. Thanks, Drew.

Drew McLellan [01:00:11]:

You bet. All right, guys. So homework, I want you, no matter what your role is, and for many of you, this is gonna be 2-parted homework. Number one, I want you to think about your role in the agency. agency and what your creativity looks like. Again, I don’t care what your title is. Every one of us is creative every single day. So I want you to think about that. And then I really want you to challenge yourself to think about the people you lead, because most of you are leading either the entire agency or a team. And I believe we are, I think as, as Todd said, we are at this weird inflection moment where technology quite honestly, can either enhance our creativity or can strip it away and make it meaningless. And we all have to decide sort of inside, yes, you need to be profitable and yes, you need to pay everybody every time payroll rolls around so they can pay their mortgage. And I know there’s a lot of pressure around that. So the question is how inside your for-profit organization can you protect and promote And what does that mean for your shop? ‘Cause for every one of you, it’s gonna be a little different. And I suspect you have defined a lot of process and you’ve got all kinds of things in your handbook, but you probably haven’t addressed the topic of what creative looks like in your shop and how do you support and protect it. So I want you to think about that a little bit, and I would love to see if you write about it or talk about it or write a song about it, however you’re gonna express that. I would love to see sort of how you approach it with your team and with your clients, because I believe that interestingly, in this world of AI and everything else, how we show up creatively, how we problem solve creatively is going to be— and you’ve heard me talk about this a million times— it’s not going to be about the stuff we make. It’s going to be about the problems that we solve. That’s how we’re going to stay valuable. That’s how we’re going to stay relevant. To our clients, and so having a manifesto around that would be really cool, I think. And so again, optional suggested homework for you following this up. And of course, I have not read a group of books, a grouping of books by one author that had my brain on fire the way Todd’s books have in a really long time. And so I highly encourage you to grab those books and to make him one of those trusted resources that you follow because I think you’re going to love. Of where it takes your brain and where it takes your agency. Okay, 2 quick things before I let you go. Of course, I want to say thank you again to our friends at White Label who are the presenting sponsor of this podcast. Super grateful to them. whitelabeliq.com/ami. And last but certainly not least, I was thinking about this this week as I was prepping for this. I might not have even heard of Todd or met Todd if I didn’t have the podcast. A friend of mine introduced us together and knew that I would find his work really interesting and that I would— you would also find his work really interesting. I don’t get to do as much of that if I don’t have the show. The show forces me in some ways to find new thought leaders and to learn. So I am really, really grateful, really, really grateful that you carve out an hour every week and that we’ve been doing this for a decade together and you keep coming back because it helps me get better every week. And so selfishly, thanks for listening. Thanks for forcing me and pushing me to get smarter and better and meet more folks like Todd. I am grateful for that, and I promise I will keep coming back. I’ll keep bringing back interesting people for you to meet if you keep coming back too. So with that, I will see you next week. All right, thanks for listening.

Danyel McLellan:

That’s all for this episode of AMI’s Build a Better Agency podcast. Be sure to visit agencymanagementinstitute.com to learn more. Learn more about our workshops, online courses, and other ways we serve small to midsize agencies. Don’t forget to subscribe today so you don’t miss an episode.