A few short weeks after 9/11, President George W. Bush hosted Vladimir Putin at his ranch in Crawford, Texas. The White House called the production company I was working for and asked if we would provide a live satellite feed for the Al Jazeera network. The very complicated relationship between the U.S. and the Middle East made this assignment intriguing and nerve-racking at the same time.
The morning of the event, the sky was blue, the wind was calm and we knew we were going to be the eyes and ears for millions of people to see what was transpiring between two of the most powerful people in the world.
But, of course, that’s when things began to change. An urgent weather alert let us know that a storm front had just appeared off in the distance and was heading our way, fast.
My team of five raced to our satellite truck and grabbed our tent. However, as we began to assemble it, we realized several key support pieces were broken. So we grabbed some rope, slung the fabric across a few trees and created a canopy to protect our gear and Mohammed, the Al Jazeera reporter.
Just as Mohammed was going live around the world, the light sprinkles turned into a deluge and the less-than-adequate canopy broke from its supports and came collapsing down, just in time to nearly ruin the broadcast.
But this is where our team thrived. Instead of ducking for cover, everyone found a way to use their hands, arms, legs and even heads to push the tent back up and keep it from ruining the moment. About 90 seconds of live broadcast, all in Arabic, miraculously went uninterrupted, and not one single viewer at home had any idea of the chaos that was avoided.
And that would become my big “aha” moment in my managerial development, hitting me like Texas thunder. You can’t weather the big storms without a strong foundational team, with people who are willing and able to fill more than their own roles.
It’s probably not news to anyone who’s managed a team that those who work above and beyond are invaluable. The hard part is finding those foundational people who hold up a successful company to make it perform at a high level.
In the agency world, we have the opportunity to be creative in ways that go beyond client work. We have to promote ourselves, and we always have to find new ways to do it. Whether this is a stunt, a guerilla activation or just a fun video, self-promotion of your agency can be a great challenge for your team without the restrictions of a normal client project. Your team will get the chance to come together and really push their thinking, and the benefits are both internal and external.
That’s part of what makes us credible marketers, and that’s where I’ve learned to create the “storms” that help develop our team’s best talent.
About once a year, our agency gets together to come up with a big idea for a project that requires effort from every department. We agree on a dream client we’d all love to work for and come up with an innovative, all-hands-on-deck method of grabbing their attention.
Our most notable turn at this was a one-day campaign we named “Jonathan Call Scott.” Inside our office, we produced a 24-hour livestreamed variety show to get the attention of one single person, then-CMO of Airbnb, Jonathan Mendenhall. It took a lot of hardworking people putting in long hours, working with outside talent (including kids and animals) and learning new broadcasting technology on the fly.
It was a wonderful, chaotic highwire act that became one of the defining moments of our agency, not just in terms of its success, but for all of our future talent development. Because they’re open to anyone who wants to participate, projects like this are a crucible for your team. They turn up the heat to show you who’s hungry and who’s willing to put in the time to develop themselves and elevate the team as a whole. And it shows you who’s content to remain on the sidelines.
The fact that the project was by us and for us, not for one of our clients, gave our team a relatively risk-free platform on which to distinguish and express ourselves without fear of a failure or client blowback. I got to see who enjoyed expressing their creativity just for the love of the game.
The experience also has the incredible side effect of galvanizing the troops. When everyone knows that they are attempting something big, you can feel that positive energy in the air, like lightning about to strike. People are frantically running around, laughing and smiling as they go from one challenge to the next. It’s the kind of energy that sustains a healthy team.
That’s just one way I find and develop the talent that continually takes us to the next level. Maybe you don’t work in a traditionally creative industry, but that doesn’t mean you can’t create your own aspirational storm. Just make it big. Make it fun. Make it risky. Give your team the chance to raise the bar for themselves and for the company. That’s how you find out who among you is there to take your team where it’s going next.
