Why More Creative People Should Be In Leadership Roles

0:00From Entrepreneur Media, this is Problem Solvers, a show in which entrepreneurs do what entrepreneurs do best, solve unexpected problems in their business. We were completely wrong. And I'm just like, it's not selling. It was like, we have to start from scratch. I'm Jason Pfeiffer, the editor-in-chief of Entrepreneur Magazine.

0:22David Droga is a CEO, but for a long time, he chose to go by a different title. It was Creative Chairman. Now, this wasn't one of those cutesy titles like Chief Fun Officer that founders and CEOs have been giving themselves for years, which side note, I think is really lame. No, to David, the title reminded him of his purpose. He rose to prominence with the advertising agency that he co-founded called Droga 5, where he became the most awarded creative at the Cannes Lions International Festival of Creativity, basically the big deal in the advertising world. And I mean, let's be honest, at that company, Droga 5, he didn't need a specific job title at all.

1:04I named the company after part of my name, Droga 5. So I could have been called myself hedge leper. It didn't really matter. But he picked the title creative chairman to make a point about where creative people belong in the business hierarchy. And it is this. Creativity has no ceiling. Creativity has no ceiling. The way David sees it, creative people are often overlooked in business. Yes, their talents are appreciated. Their work is monetized. But C-suites are rarely filled with creative types. and creative types rarely advocate for themselves as leaders or drivers of business. David wants that to change, which is why when the global professional services company Accenture acquired Droga 5 and made him the head of a$16 billion digital communications arm called Accenture Song, he originally kept his creative chairman title, though he did hand it over to a colleague in February.

2:02And now he uses his megaphone to push for more leaders like himself, which is to say, more creators in the C-suite. In this conversation on Problem Solvers, David is going to explain why. Why creatives should be major decision makers. If you are a creative, why you should be advocating for yourself. And if you are just running a company that works with creatives, why you should see those creatives as people who belong in leadership roles. And we're going to talk about the mistakes that both sides make when they're trying to get there. That's all coming up after the break. If you like this podcast and you want to hear more of me, and come on, who doesn't want to hear more of me?

2:46Then good news for you. I co-host another podcast. It is called Help Wanted. On Help Wanted, me and my co-host, who is best-selling money expert, Nicole Lappin, we invite people, average people, regular people, working people, people like you to come on our show and tell us their work problems. And then we help solve them. We talk people through how to negotiate, how to find your purpose, how to make a big change, whatever it is, we are there. It is so fun. It is so real. And it is so useful. Nicole Lappin and I, you can find us at the podcast, Help Wanted. Find Help Wanted wherever you get your podcasts, including this one.

3:32All right, we're back. I am talking with advertising legend, David Droga, about why more creative people should be in leadership roles. A edited version of this conversation appeared in the May issue of Entrepreneur Magazine, but here you're going to get the whole thing because we dive in deep. And David's perspective is just so fascinating. So here we go. Tell me the problem that you are addressing when you're telling people that there have to be more creatives in leadership roles. Well, I think it's a false narrative that all creative people are irresponsible and that we are only concerned with the soft stuff.

4:06Part of my objective building my own agency was 100 % the business plan was to make really relevant, really influential work and to work with people that I liked and to produce a product that I thought was more class. But that was my business plan. Because I knew that also if I did that, that I would grow. and as you grow, you create a more secure environment for your employees and you can hire more people and you can work with more spectacular people and you get more opportunities and all that sort of stuff. Now, it wasn't a free-for-all. It wasn't sort of free-range the whole way. It was just like, see what happens.

4:42I also made sure that we were accountable and we sort of forecast and we also had, I surrounded myself with great operators and all that sort of stuff. But as I said, I felt that the best way to legitimize my vision or belief system or whatever you want to call it, was to build the most robust business. as opposed to be sort of a bright flare that was shiny and interesting for a while or culturally relevant for a moment and then just go on to the next thing. Because, again, I don't – like I love being a creative person, but I don't want it to be seen as sort of a high-end gun or a flavor or a trend.

5:13You know, creativity is – the word creativity is really about you, about possibilities, and that's what business is. I mean, you know, to be future-facing business, you want to be relevant, you want to be sort of future-facing. and I just think that we, by and large, there's sweeping generalizations I'll make in some of these conversations because I'm not saying, again, that all sort of A-type, traditional sort of management node CEOs are boring and not creative, but I'm just talking stereotypically. I didn't want to acquire it to sport, to be like the most sought-after striker in football, in soccer, or running back or QB or wide receiver that are fantastic and they get all this stuff right, but then they're not really making decisions.

5:57You know what I mean? Like you can only do as much as you can in your environment, but you can't control all the environment. And I felt like more creative people, if they could be in a position where they could sort of see around corners or plan or make sure they understand how a business is operated, they would do it in a different way. As I said, forecast it on what they think it could be, not what it is. And I think a lot of the current CEOs are sort of brought in to be, to sustain and manage things and to do it in a linear, incremental way. And I think the times we live in and also what's exciting about being created, again, it's not about irresponsible, it's about new and opportunities, it's about possibilities.

6:36It's about asking, not just giving different answers, but also just asking different questions that aren't really asked in the service of business. I think that's really fascinating. And I love it. And maybe we're, maybe part of the secret sauce of, you know, I can't speak for myself, I can't speak for anyone else, but part of my thing is I sort of distill things down to sort of the marrow of things and want to understand what the meaning of something will be and what the ramifications of something will be. More so I don't just drill down to like, this is, I've never thought in my entire career when I was building a$10 business, I wasn't thinking how much money can I extract from this situation?

7:15Or how could, you know, I would always think, what can we do? What value? Like I've always said, I think the average CEO, particularly if they come from this business track, they go into a situation and they think about, what can I get out of this situation? I think a creative person inherently goes into a situation to think, what can I add to this situation? What can I give to this? I think that's a creative thing. That's an interesting distinction. Before we fully strike down the stereotype and move on to solutions, let me just get your reaction to me attempting to back up the stereotype. and it would go like this, or at least this is based on my own experience.

7:51So I've spent my career in magazines and I will tell you something that I have learned from working under a lot of editors-in-chief before I became one. And hopefully I'm not carrying this tradition, but who knows? If you talk to my team, maybe they would say I am, which is that, so editors and writers would fall under the creative category and those people move up and eventually become managers and eventually kind of oversee operations, including budgets. And what I have observed is that a lot of people are actually quite bad at doing that. And the reason for that is because they came from a tradition of creation of that the skill set was really, you know, great writing, great editing, great product, but they never went through the training and never therefore learned under people who actually were really good at building, managing budgets, understanding how to derive value and grow a whole business, and not just be precious about the thing that they're creating.

8:46I imagine that that's what a lot of people who are outside of creatives worry about is that, oh, well, creatives, look, they're great, but they're so precious about the thing that they're creating. They would rather spend money than make money. And that's not how we run a business. And I mean, look, I'm not arguing for this, but I will tell you I've worked under a lot of people who ran organizations that I didn't think should be running organizations. Tell me what you think. It's all true, by the way. I'm not saying that every creative should and will be able to run it. 100 % like there are some creators that have best left them protected in their sandpit and let them be pure and spontaneous and a little bit of a bubble that's you want that's glorious 100 % and you know don't get me wrong I surprise myself and try I'm trying to train myself as well because my happy place is talking about work and working on work on ideas and creating 100 % my entire career was built on that you know and some of the stuff I'd have to and I also have a short attention span so i have to convince myself that even the most boring stuff is in service of building something so instead of building everyone who's created whether you're a writer a designer you're productless you're about creating something that manifests itself into the world or in people's lives but i'm just trying to convince that parlay that from okay yes i have to help other people do that but my creation now has to be the bigger mission that we're on and sort of you know now I have to hold my breath and bite my lips sometimes when I sit in meetings where honestly my soul wants to kill itself.

10:10But I'm thinking about the bigger picture here. I'm thinking, okay, and I'm trying to cut to decisions along the process that have the product and the people baked into it. Again, you don't have to choose a side, but I agree with that. Not everyone in creative should do it. I mean, it's a learning curve because I'll even speak to, you know, when I started, not that we want to do a CV thing, but when I first started, I was a really selfish creative person. advertising used to be sort of copywriters and art directors sitting together and ideating together and creating and i was a writer and i didn't like the first art director i sat with so i was all i'm going to do it all myself i became adamant that i wanted to do everything myself i would write an art director and sign all the sort of things and i'm sort of very fortunate i had a lot of success doing that so i got self-sufficient about wanting to be by myself and i didn't really rely on anyone else but then i suddenly discovered as i moved up the food chain and sort of started running coming said I actually liked other people's ideas as much as mine and I liked helping their ideas come to life and sometimes that was by contributing to it or sometimes that was clearing the path for it so when I moved from being a writer to a creator that was a surprise to me so I sort of felt like I'd opened the aperture of what it was to be a creator it didn't mean I had to do it but if I could shape or influence it that that was the same thing so it's it's just more like increments the boiling the frog it wasn't like i suddenly woke up and thought i want i never had an interest to wanting to do spreadsheets or talk about accretive values or do book and that's not how i'm wired but i am wired to want to see the impact of what we do and as i said the best thing i can do as i moved up the ranks was to understand that if i can have more of a say in how we what we stand for and what we do and the type of work we want to do and the type of people we have and how they're compensated and how they're incentivized and how we show up to clients.

11:59So it's sort of, that's how I got much more into the sort of the business side of it. In service of creative. I didn't do it because I wanted to be a businessman. I did it because I realized it legitimized creative. I had to protect it and push it by being part of the people who make those decisions. You naturally transitioned into what my follow-up question was going to be. But let me just put a point on it there, which is, I was curious what your advice would be for people who consider themselves creatives and maybe would like to challenge themselves to see if they can serve that larger role where they're stepping at least halfway out of the thing that they're fully doing in creatives.

12:39And it sounds like the unlock for you and maybe the thing that you would push them to evaluate is, are you willing to pay the price of admission, which is dealing with spreadsheets and all sorts of stuff you don't want to do, in the service of that you then get to protect and foster creatives at a larger scale. I think that's the first thing. If you can move from being, as I said, a writer to an editor, you're already at the start of the journey. Because you've moved out of it's just about ideas rolling around your brain to creating a model that may elevate other people's ideas. You can still contribute.

13:13As I said, when I started Drographive, in the beginning, when I was the first employee as such, I was writing the stuff. And most of the stuff, and then when we got one employee, 10 employees, whatever we got, I would have an influence. But my influence started to be, okay, who am I hiring to also can have an influence? Now, I knew at the end of the day, wherever it was, my fingerprints were on it one way or another. So I didn't feel like I had to prove anything. And the types of work we did or the types of clients we went after or the types of clients we declined, it was very much a manifestation.

13:41And again, there's also a certain, maybe it's a naivety or an innocence or stupidity, whichever one you think, that comes with being a creative person that's sort of more pure because I'm an optimist as well, which is a scary thing to be. So I just bet on us all the time. Again, so I would make decisions to not take clients. Whenever logic says, you have to take this client. You'll never, you know what I mean? I would honestly kept on saying, you know, we don't have to be for everyone. We just have to be for someone. And we're in a big enough market and our work was distinctive enough that we kept growing.

14:08We sort of obviously kept growing. But that was a byproduct of our work. So again, my business plan, being my business head, was the work still. It wasn't my business plan was the efficiencies of this and all that. Now I had accountants that were telling me not to do things and making sure that we were, you know, like responsible. And, you know, it's no coincidence that I would say that our margins at Drone 5 were probably higher than any agency in America. Our work was more celebrated in the agency in America. And all that sort of retention was because, again, not because I'm some genius or because we had a great time by the way.

14:42I had some geniuses working around me. but because we just focused on the creative but i was able to protect the creative because i was holistically surrounding not just one dimension of it where someone could scarper it from the side and that's why i think creative people have people that have to be at the table you know i mean it doesn't mean every conversation has to be about the creative but it allows the people who are product people whatever industry they're in to represent that at a level that's not that's being taken out of the c-suites you know a lot of the times the c-suites aren't it's not experts leading experts anymore it's generalists speak a little more to that well i think again a lot of people get promoted because they can move and pivot between roles and just be great managers of people great with the purse strings and sort of know how to do all that sort of stuff they don't really understand the essence of what they make what built this whatever the industry is pick an industry car manufacturing music industry Sure.

15:43You know, products, you know, like... Right. They understand how... Are you saying basically... So if you're on the business side of an industry that's sort of built on something that's creative, you have the people who make it and the people who feel very close to it, the people who understand the beauty behind a piece of writing or a piece of music or a piece of creative or whatever. And then at some point you get high enough that what you see are people who are very, very good at figuring out how to monetize these things or hopefully good, maybe they're not good, but don't really have an understanding of what it means to make the thing that they're selling.

16:14Is that what you mean? Yes. Don't get me wrong. I understand the necessity and the need for people who know how to operationalize things and to really get in the weeds of being in the supply chain and all of the things that make the world tick. But as I said, at the end of the day, you can't forget what they're in service of. They're working for a company that makes a certain product. That product is their lifeline and their oxygen. okay you just try and squeeze or if you're not going to grow a company into the future if your way to grow is by through efficiency plays and you know all that sort of stuff i feel like that's that's why i think not every company and do i should every person on the c-suite be a creative person no it would be pandemonium i'm just advocating for there to be more i want to ask you what that looks like and what your guidance is in a moment but let me just before we get there I'm going to armchair psychologize you for a second, because I'm curious what you will make of it, which is as you went from, I mean, you took me briefly through this path that you started as a creative, very focused on your own work, then you discovered the value of other people's work.

17:17And eventually you came to run what became a very large agency. And now here you are at an enormous organization. And you are holding on to this title of creative chairman. And I wonder if part of that is because as you move into, as you have throughout your career, moved into roles where you had to balance these two, you had to represent both sides, that you basically didn't want to lose yourself in the other side, because it becomes very easy. And I found it myself, even just... I mean, as editor-in-chief of a magazine, I am still mostly firmly planted on the creative side. But now I have to deal with budgets.

17:48And I speak as much to the president of the company as I do to my editors. And so I get to understand the financial concerns of and business motivations of the company far better than I ever would have when I was just a lower level editor. and therefore I have a whole lot more sympathy for it and probably start to think differently and make decisions that are a little different than I would have when I was just a pure creative. I wonder if the reason that you frame yourself in the way that you do is to... Are you anchoring yourself in the creative so that you don't lose touch with that, do you think?

18:18I'm sure that's true. I'm 100 % sure that's true. Because I feel like it's so funny because I think sometimes... Again, I think sometimes people, when they talk to me and assume that I'm just a regular CEO, I almost worry that they're like, hang on, I don't think, do they know that I'm actually a creative person? You know, I would be seen as someone who's, I'll tell you two funny stories. One, so again, I'm one of seven kids. I've got four older brothers, two younger brothers, and three of my brothers, my older brothers, all on the sort of financial side of the world. You know, one of them is very senior in a massive bank in Australia.

18:52Another one runs one of the biggest hedge funds in Australia. Another one has his own massive hedge fund. So they're like financial, very successful. and they do things that honestly like would make my you know face peel because i find it so boring right it's just there's no soul to it i've said this this is not something but sure sure very matter of fact and they're about money and moving that sort of stuff and then i have a brother who is a sculptor and then i have a sister who is works for a crisis hotline she's the best of all than I have another sister who's a stay-at-home mom. But to both camps, I'm a compromise because I was a creative.

19:33I'm part creative, but I'm not quite a sculptor or a thing like that. And to the other ones, you know, I'm not just pure business. So they were like – and for me, I was like, I love being in the middle. I love the tension of that one. You know, I love the sort of being creative in an environment where it's creativity with accountability. I really like that part of it. Because that's why I didn't choose a side. but there was also this, I think there's a, again, a myth by creative people. I don't know if it's an insecurity from creative people. Maybe I'm sure I've got that. In fact, I kept a great title, but I remember when I was running an agency in London, or Sachi and Sachi, and this was pre, there's a bit of a long way to throw it as a point to it.

20:08Pre them going public and independent company, and they created some stock program that anyone in the company could buy stock in the company at whatever price was. Let's say it's one pound. Just to make the point. And when they went public, If they didn't like the price of the stock, they could get their money back plus interest. So it was a no-lose proposition. It was an amazing, amazing offer. 100 % of all the business side account people and all that signed up for that program in the agency. And the creative partner, which I was running, which was about 200 people, 25 % signed up. And I remember thinking, we are so stupid.

20:44Because we think that if we're good with money, or that we even think about money, that we're no longer purely creative. And I remember standing up saying, you guys are the biggest schmucks ever because you deserve to make money out of this more than anyone because you are the engine. You know what I mean? You are the thing that makes this thing go, the ideas. Yet you're sitting there thinking, oh, it's too much hard or it's too much effort or if I make money from this, does that make me less my compromised version? I was like, it's ridiculous. And again, it's one of those things where I sort of said, I want the people who are at the center of it and creating ideas and all the anxiety and stress and it comes with that to also feel like they have reward for that and not to sort of have expiration dates on stuff like that.

21:30So I love that answer. David, let's talk about solutions. What does it mean to bring creatives into the C-suite if we're talking about a very large company that has a defined C-suite, but also the audience for entrepreneurs is broader and companies of all sizes. So I'm also just going to kind of use the term leadership, leadership group, leadership roles, executive team. What's your prescription there? What does that look like? What does it mean? It's one thing to say, yes, creatives belong there, but what does it practically mean? Okay. Well, you mean like what sort of things that they can bring to the room or are you saying literally, how do they get there?

22:04Sorry, tell us the tip. I guess I'm saying if you're a... Let's speak to two audiences here. Audience number one is someone who identifies as a creative who wants to get there, wants to make sure that they have the voice that matters in the room to help represent creatives and drive the conversation. But number two, let's say we're talking to the founder or the CEO who looks around hearing this conversation and says, you know what, I don't have any creatives in my C-suite, on my executive team. But what does it mean? Is this a token thing? I bring one up, right? What are we looking at? Put some bones on the idea.

22:45Well, look, I don't think it should be a token thing. Again, we don't want to get to the token aspect of things. But I think it's looking at people that have a history. Again, that's why I always try and bring it down to some more product people. Because that can be good as I don't. But I'm also aware that to be a creative person doesn't always mean you have to have been to art school or be a writer or art director designer. It's a mindset as much as it is an attitude. It's about, as I said before, it's about sort of looking at things and really thinking about where you could go or have the audacity to think beyond the next quarter.

23:16You know, business is so measured by what's happening around quarters that no one can see past that. And how can you design for the future if you can't see past three months? No wonder everyone's following the same track. And I think that that's one of the beauties of creative people, particularly as product people. is they look at, they see people in the equation. You know, like I have this very simple philosophy whenever we've created something or we're building something, or even when we're sort of building a vision or where I was making something for one of my clients, for the customers, for the consumers, I always jump to the end part of any decision thinking, why would or why should someone give a shit about this?

23:52You know, and then you sort of work your way back from that. As opposed to like, this week I just make money or this week. You know, I mean, I always sort of work back, okay, what do I want the ramifications of this to be? What do I want the actions to be? And as I said, that used to be from when we would create something for one of the clients, what do we want the consumer's reaction or actions to be from this? And now I do it in the context of the business. Like if we buy this company or if we sort of make this claim about where we want to go or we hire this group of people, like what happened?

24:18What's after that? Like what does that lead to? And I'm sort of – I think creative people sort of jump ahead of things. And I think that's what's exciting. And as I said, and we don't necessarily make decisions, which sounds dangerous on having to have the most buttoned up understanding of how we get to somewhere. Someone can tell me a reason why something should happen by hook or by cook, I'll find a way for us to do it more so than someone explaining to me how to do it. You know, I mean, tell me why we need to climb to the top of the mountain, why that's important, as opposed to tell me about all the equipment we've got to get started.

24:49You know, I mean, right. That for me is the difference. It's as much about the sort of the storytelling and the narrative about it, but it's also to understand like why? Why climb that freaking mountain? We don't need to climb a mountain. We need to dig a hole. I don't know. Whatever you like, this has got to be. I just think we just bring different perspectives to stuff, and that's necessary. I mean, and most industries, by the way, look at the ones that are evolving and changing. They're led by creative people in nature because, as I said, creativity is just about new ideas. And, again, I said it before, like it's not what is and will be but what should and could be.

25:22That's the difference between a mindset, really. And as I said, the audacity to don't worry about how you get something done, but to more worry about why it needs to be done. And that's really important. That's how I think people I admire, it's just they have a great idea or they have great ambitions, and it brings people along. And creative people just, we also are very good at, I think, by and large, in reducing things back to their simplicity. I always said that if ever I had a superpower, my superpower is I can dumb down anything. You know what I mean? Because there's so much complexity in the world now.

25:55And some of that complexity is people trying to justify their roles. So they add another layer of complexity and justification and it just ends up with, you know, you can have 30 people in a room and there's just so much complexity there. And also everyone's agreeing with it. And if everyone's got the same type of voice, if 10 people in a room agree, then you only need one of them. That's a great point. What you just said reminds me a lot of something that I experience quite a bit, which is... So we'll just use a real world example. Entrepreneur Media, the parent company of Entrepreneur Magazine, gets an RFP from some big brands and partner.

26:31And so the sales team is first to look at it, they kick it around. And then inevitably, there's a big call between a bunch of people on the sales team, and then me and a couple other people from what you might call the creative side. And the conversations are always funny because the sales team is largely focused on what can we make that serves the exact thing that this client is looking for, right? And so what they will come up with is something that probably is going to sound good to the client. But I hear it, of course, and what I think is, but absolutely zero viewers will ever want to watch that video, right?