I don’t have all the answers (surprise surprise)

Often, I get asked ‘what’s next?’ or ‘how do we do this?’ on projects which haven’t been done before.

It’s a pain in the arse of a question. But now I have an answer I think. Paul Bennett, Chief Creative Officer at Ideo, when asked ‘what’s next?‘ by the Google Think Quarterly (Google’s very good agency charm offensive) replied in this quarter’s ‘innovation’ themed essays;

…it’s about asking questions. I’m very inspired by what President Obama is doing right now, which is just about putting questions out there,being very transparent. In a world where trust has broken down, which clearly it has in a lot of businesses and in a lot of governments, you have to be transparent. And it’s not about being the one with the answer anymore. It’s about being the one with the smart questions and having everybody answer it with you.

Here’s the video in full;

The other week, I was faced with a very similar parallel. We had arrived at an idea for a client which we hadn’t done before (which always excites me). The account team were unsure whether to involve the client and other stakeholders in the production meeting as we felt we needed, as an agency, to get our ‘ducks in a row’ before we involved a wider group.

But in a world, as Paul describes, where transparency and honesty reign, coupled with the variety of creative execution possibilities today, perhaps it’s a smarter and quicker way to work with as many clever people as possible to ask the right questions together. It not only encourages all stakeholders (not just the agency) to emotionally invest in the project and make sure it happens, but also cultivates a much more open and transparent working relationship with a variety of stakeholders. This changes the role of the ‘creative agency’ maybe (or perhaps more emphasis on the word ‘agency’ than ‘creative’) where innovative projects are concerned; where the agency increasing acts as an ‘agent’, a catalyst and facilitator of smart people asking the right questions rather than simply setting the “creative vision” as the ‘creative lead’ on a project. In this model, it also becomes a lot easier to iterate and improve the idea collectively as you go.

So when you’re doing something new, perhaps it’s OK to admit, that you don’t have all the answers. The value now, perhaps, is knowing who you want to ask the questions with.