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Berlin Brief

Creative Leadership Lessons from the Military (J. David Slocum)

As part of a long-term research project examining the guiding tenets of creative leadership conducted with Doug Guthrie, we’ve interviewed dozens of leaders of creative businesses. Many of these leaders were previously or remain successful creatives. Besides illuminating the ways that effective creative leadership can be developed and sustained, one of the striking elements of these interviews has been the repeated references to military leadership – typically, as a contrast or foil to creativity-fostering leadership.

Faculty Spotlight: Charles Day Interview (Part I)

Charles Day is the founder of The Lookinglass, a group of advisors focused on helping companies use their creativity to build competitive advantage. He is a Leadership Confidant to some of the most respected and influential leaders across the creative industries.

People, Too, Eat Strategy for Breakfast

Culture eats strategy for breakfast. Attributed to the management guru Peter Drucker, the line became popular in the middle of the last decade when Mark Fields, President of Ford Motor, posted it in his war room. Regardless of strategic plans or priorities, Fields was saying, the company’s culture warranted sustained attention from his leadership team. Even more fundamentally, implicit in Fields’ posting was the message that leaders could address and actively shape organizational culture for the better.

A Book Review by David Slocum.

“The Leader’s Guide to Building an Everyday Strategic Practice”.

A.G. Lafley and Roger L. Martin, Playing to Win: How Strategy Really Works, Cambridge: Harvard Business Review Press, 2013.

A.G. Lafley, CEO of Procter & Gamble from 2000-2009, is one of the most-respected and successful corporate leaders of the young twenty-first century. (He’s also much beloved by Berlin School EMBA students, one of whose rites de passage involves a thorough analysis of the major reorganization faced by him and P&G in 2000.) Roger Martin, a long-time business consultant and currently Dean of the Rotman School of Management in Toronto, is among today’s most original and prolific management thinkers. Having worked together for nearly three decades, the pair have written a book arguing that “strategy really works” through the development and practice of ongoing strategic leadership rather than the application of specific frameworks, analyses or best practices.

Shaun Abrahamson Interview - Crowd Storm

How did the idea of crowd storm come about and how does it relate to your Berlin
school thesis?

Shaun Abrahamson: During my thesis, I realized that I had no idea how mass collaboration worked. I would identify examples of large groups of people doing something interesting online, but I didn’t know
who was responsible for organizing the work or how they were going about it. So I set out to
discover who was behind the curtain in some of the more active projects.

Along the way, I found myself contributing to a site where people were collecting examples of
mass collaboration (yes, very meta). And one of the people who responded to a comment on
the wiki, turned out to be Bastian Unterberg, who I would interview for my thesis. Over the last
few years we have collaborated on a few big projects and he is now a friend and one of my coauthors
on Crowdstorm.

Rethinking Your New Year Resolution by Prof. David Slocum

‘Tis the season of making resolutions for the new year. Of looking back at what has been been and looking ahead to what can be. It’s a season of future possibilities grounded in the hard work, the successes and the failures, of the past twelve months.

One of the core tenets of creative leadership is reflection – consistent, constructive, courageous reflection about our individual values and beliefs and the actions they guide. Reflection serves as a crucial basis for understanding ourselves as well as our actions as leaders. Reflection and the self-knowledge it generates also shapes our decisions about the future. We pause to reflect on the “why” of our busy lives in order to decide on “what” to do next and “how” effectively to take that action.

Meet the New Gang

Meet the newest Berliners! We welcomed 22 new participants to the Berlin School of Creative Leadership and are proud of our very large and very diverse class, with professional fields including journalism, fashion, design, radio, TV, advertising, marketing and PR. Here's a complete list of the newest Berliners:

Axel Quack wins the 2012 Michael Conrad Thesis Award

Axel Quack (EMBA '12) won the Michael Conrad Outstanding Thesis Award for his thesis on prototyping innovation. Like many Berliners, Axel's thesis was much more than just a written academic work, but an actual application that has helped the transform Pixelparks, the company for which he is Director of Innovation. Considering the relevance of his topic and interest that so many in the creative fields, and beyond, have in instilling innovation within the company culture, we asked Axel a few questions about his work, his thesis and how it can be applied to other companies.

Congratulations to the August 2012 graduates of the Berlin School of Creative Leadership.

In order to properly welcome these recent graduates to the Berlin School of Creative Leadership Alumni Association, we thought we should first properly introduce these recent graduates to their fellow alumni. Below are the latest additions to your long list of creative contacts from over 50 countries:

In Berlin, Learning to be better Creative Leaders

Creativity is not enough. To drive economic and human resources towards success, it is that 'certain something' that drives success: this is taught at the Berlin School of Creative Leadership. We talked with Michael Conrad, President of the school, which boasts a number of Cannes' Lions.

To discover that their ‘students’ were able to win more Cannes’ Lions than the whole of the United States in 2011 is a great satisfaction for a school that aims to combine creative talent and leadership skills. This is one result of the Berlin School of Creative Leadership, which combines a faculty of accredited academics and ‘gurus of creativity,’ such as the legendary Sir John Hegarty or the brilliant David Droga. At the heart of BSCL, which was founded in 2006, is Michael Conrad, former Vice Chairman and Chief Creative Officer of Leo Burnett Worldwide. Today, he is preparing to expand the school’s presence in Brazil and China.

Interview with Class 10's Lea Stanković

Here is a feature on Class 10's Lea Stanković, who was recently interviewed about her experience at the Berlin School so far for a marketing magazine in Serbia.

Craig Markus: Creating a Company out of Your Thesis

Craig Markus is one of the Berlin School graduates who realized he could create something much bigger than just a thesis; he could use that time to create Rage+Grace+Partners, a company which embodies his personal philosophy of life. But, like many participants, it was a long road before he found the research topic that would be the culmination of his Berlin School EMBA experience. We asked Craig a few questions to figure out the secret to mastering the thesis.

How to Get People to Talk to You

Sudhir Venkatesh, Chair of the Berlin School's Academic Advisory Board, recently wrote an interesting blog post about "getting people to do an interview" for the Freakonomics blog (Freakonomics is the name of a bestselling series of books which also feature Sudhir and his work).

Sudhir Wants To Know...

Dear Berliners,

Question:If you could win one award to guarantee creative success for the next ten years, from which organization would choose to be honored?

A. Cannes Lions B. CLIO C. D&AD D. One Show

Collaborating Better

In a recent piece in the Financial Times (FT, March 15, 2012), Ross Tieman addresses the challenge of moving effectively “from teamwork to collaboration." Successful collaboration today, he observes, requires a fuller capacity, often guided by emotional intelligence, to work with individuals with different backgrounds, areas of expertise, and geographical location. Being a good team player is no longer enough in a time when teams and the situations or projects with which they engage are so varied and complex.

How Helping the Homeless Can Teach You Lessons in Crisis Management

Berlin School alumnus and head of BBH Labs New York, Saneel Radia talks about leadership takeaways after a project he spearheaded at SXSW spiraled into a media firestorm.

Saneel Radia had the chance to test out his creative leadership skills when his project `Homeless Hotspots’ turned from a innovative philanthropic cause into a cause for media scrutiny. As head of BBH Labs, Saneel came to Austin, Texas’ famous annual digital, film and music festival to discuss the latest technologies that will be revolutionizing the world. SXSW is where Twitter was first introduced to the masses. This year the founder of Pinterest talked to other budding tech entrepreneurs. However, with some of the brightest and creative minds in the country gathered in one spot, it is also the perfect testing ground for new ideas that can spur social change.

The end of Groupthink? Creativity while "Going Solo".

A few months ago, I ran across a powerful editorial in the New York Times that decried “groupthink” as a hindrance to creativity. Who would have thought this to be the case? In so many creative leadership programs (and business schools generally), the power of teams is given great emphasis—indeed, it is one of the great mantras of modern teaching regarding recipes for business success.

MIX

One of the most consistent and important themes of the Berlin School’s approach to excellence in creative leadership is that creativity and innovation need to flourish across all levels of creative organizations. Inspiring and fostering fresh, effective or even industry-changing products, services or campaigns are, of course, essential. Yet at least as important is the leadership of innovation and successful creative change in the practice of management and the design of organizations. During this time of extraordinary transformation of the creative communication industries, of technologies, and of the relationships between agencies or other firms and customers or clients, an openness to thoroughgoing innovation in management itself can provide a valuable competitive advantage.

How Creative Collaboration Leads to Innovation.

It might seem incredible that students, professionals, parents and singles will offer up their homes for free in order to help out and meet wayward travelers. But one can only look at the numbers – five million ‘couchsurfs’ in dozens of countries around the world and see that couchsurfing.org’s idea of creative collaboration works. It’s an idea, marketing technique and philosophy that is becoming ever more relevant for creative businesses as well.

15 Tips for Rebuilding Your Brand

Whether you are starting a new job, taking on a new position in your current company or simply considering a career change, the following suggestions from Deutsche Telekom’s Hans Christian Schwingen are definitely worth taking to heart.

Creative Entrepreneurship: Reaching the next level

5 Questions on… Creative Entrepreneurship: Reaching the next level

In this edition of 5 Questions, we talk with Leonard Sommer, co-founder of the advertising agency Sommer+Sommer and an Executive MBA student at the Berlin School of Creative Leadership. His company is releasing a new campaign for Nintendo’s Wii game console featuring tennis star Steffi Graf. We talk to Leonard about the leadership skills and tools that have helped him build a successful agency, and the inspiration behind his agency’s newest creation.

The 'Berlin Brief'

The Berlin Brief is a space for an exchange of ideas, discussions on innovation and lessons learned from creative leaders both within and outside the Berlin School network. From interviews with Berlin School participants on their own methods of leadership to thought essays from some of the creative faculty, the Berlin Brief is constantly being updated with the latest ideas and management philosophies that we hope readers can integrate into their own professional lives. The writings here are meant to spark a discussion, inspire an idea and share the thoughts and philosophies that are often discussed among participants and industry leaders in a Berlin School classroom - whether it be in Europe, the Americas or the far East.