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Creating a Culture Where Ideas Thrive: A Q&A with John Coyne
March 30, 2021 Leadership Team Management
Guest Speaker

John Coyne

Intel head of global brand strategy, creative, and media

John Coyne is the head of brand strategy, creative, and media at Intel. He oversees strategy for global branding, brand and product identity, global content creation, and more. Before joining Intel in 2017, John shared his talents at Adobe, Goodby Silverstein & Partners, and BBDO, partnering with companies like HP, Cisco, and Apple — and winning several awards for his team’s work, like UK’s Campaign Magazine’s Global Advertiser of the Year (2001) and Creativity Magazine’s Campaign of the Year (2002). John finds creative inspiration outside of work when spending time with his wife and two daughters. He also gets out to ride his bike every chance he gets around his home in the Bay Area.

Inspiration won’t come knocking without an invitation.

If your creative team hasn’t been as inspired or motivated lately, you don’t have to wait around for that creative block to go away. John Coyne, head of global brand strategy and creative at Intel, has some tips on how to build a company culture that fosters creativity.

In this episode of Real Creative Leadership, John shares those tips with host Adam Morgan, like why — and how — to reward risk-takers and respect everyone as decision-makers. John’s insights are the tools you need to kick creative block to the curb once and for all — and build trust with your team while doing it.

Watch this episode to discover:

  • 3 types of behaviors a great company culture promotes
  • Why strong team and agency relationships impact creativity
  • How to help your team tie creativity to business outcomes
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mentioned in this show:
adammorgan
Adam Morgan
Creative Leader and RCL Host
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The Stoke Group
Digital Marketing and Full-Service Content Agency

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Transcript

Adam:

Alright, hello. We’re so excited to have you here. This is Season 2, Episode 4. We are going to be talking about, how do you build and create an environment at your company to foster creativity? And I know this is a big one. There are a lot of articles that I’ve read out there on the interwebs of how you do it. And what’s funny about it is most of the time, most of those articles are talking about the physical environment, where they’re talking about, “Oh, you need this kind of mood lighting,” or “You need these colors on the wall, or this kind of design around you.” And I’ve seen a lot of agencies and companies who put a good focus on those physical aspects. I think those are important, but that’s not what we’re going to talk about today. We’re going to talk about the other stuff.

Adam:

We’re going to talk about leadership tactics, team tactics…whatever you need to do to help create the right environment. Not just physically, but also emotionally and strategically so that you have the right things in play in order to have great creative ideas. So I am honored today to have with me John Coyne, and we’re going to start out letting him talk about his background and where he is. But he is an awesome, awesome individual. We worked together years ago and I was highly, highly impressed. So I’m so grateful to have him on the show today. So John, I’m going to turn it over to you and let you just tell our audience who you are, where you’re from, a little bit about your background. So they get a good idea of who you are before we jump into this conversation.

John Coyne:

Yeah. Awesome. Hey, great to be here. Thanks for having me. It is always a pleasure to get to see you and spend time with you again. So yeah. Hi everybody. John Coyne. Currently I lead the brand, creative, and media team over at Intel. I’ve been at Intel about four years. As a matter of fact, exactly four years. Prior to that, I had a stint at Adobe where Adam and I got to work together, which was awesome. Prior to that, my whole career, for longer than I care to admit, has all been on the agency side.

John Coyne:

18 years. It could be Silverstein and Partners, where I had the opportunity to really work on big global complex brands and do tons of award-winning and really satisfying and rewarding work with some of the smartest and best people I’ve ever worked with. So that was obviously a very formative time of my career. Prior to that, I’d been at different agencies, most of which was at a couple of different offices within the BBDO network as well. So I have been on a learning journey through my whole career, obviously very focused on creative ideas, creative product. I love the opportunity to be in a big company like Intel and try to just infuse creative thinking and bring that as a strategic weapon obviously to our business. So I’m excited to be here.

Adam:

Oh, excellent. And I do want to point out one thing and maybe give a little more light on this. Oftentimes on the show, we bring on creative leaders, meaning it’s someone who’s been a creative director or a writer or designer or something. And John, you’re coming from a different angle. You come from the strategy side of the house. And so that’s a different thing, but it’s really important to note that because you’re still a huge champion of creativity…and I want everyone to know, being a creative leader doesn’t mean you have to be a creative in the traditional sense at all.

John Coyne:

Yeah, absolutely. So my background…starting in strategy and in account service work, and…I started my career when those two positions actually all sat together in one person. So I’ve always believed in the importance of strategy, understanding the business strategy as well, to make sure that all the creative thinking is obviously lined up against what the customer needs as well as what’s going to drive the business goal in the end. So I have a great, great respect and appreciation for what creative people go through and recognize that my team has a huge responsibility in setting creatives up to be able to succeed. So it’s a very symbiotic partnership.

Adam:

Let’s dig into that partnership a little bit more, because when we talked earlier, you talked about how important it was for you to have a deep partnership with creative teams and why that matters. Tell us a little bit more about your thoughts on creating that partnership.

John Coyne:

Yeah, that’s a great question. So I was kind of raised in the business. So a little bit of an anomaly in terms of my background. My dad had his own advertising agency. My mother worked there as well. We grew up as kids…other families might talk about politics or local news around the dinner table. We talked about advertising. We talked about creativity. We talked about campaigns and ideas, and those were my formative years, which is fascinating. So I was kind of doomed to kind of have to go down this path of staying in advertising. So that was my background. So I always understood that really the only thing that anybody sees at the end of all that we do, the end product is the work, and that creative product is what represents all of the thinking, and all of the meetings and all of the great strategic insights we have. So I’ve always understood that the most effective place I can spend my energy, quite frankly, is with creative leaders, trying to make sure that they’ve got everything they need to be able to really have breakthrough ideas. So, a great example of that is my long tenure at Goodby, which obviously is a very creative agency. My first conference, my first stop every morning was my creative partner. 11 of those years while I was there, it was a guy named Steve Simpson who was my creative partner while I was there.

John Coyne:

He went on to do other great things since then, but we would spend the beginning part of every day together, trying to problem solve, kind of talk about work we had on the table, presentations we had coming up, and we really wanted to make sure that we were aligned on what we were not only doing ourselves, but what we had our teams focused on so that we didn’t have any disconnects.

John Coyne:

And Steve really valued the partnership with me from a kind of a strategy and then just a business overview standpoint. And he wanted to make sure that that was always in the center of the creative ideas that he and his teams were working on. So that’s how I started every day. If he didn’t call me at eight in the morning, I was in his office at nine in the morning. And that was kind of how we started every day. And it worked for about a decade together like that. So I’ve continued to really invest in those creative relationships since then, because as I said, that’s the key to making everything go.

Adam:

Yep. And I want to be careful here. We’re not just talking about…there are many, many episodes where we talked about relationships, but this is such a critical part. If you’re building the environment, you’ve got to have those relationships right first. And talk to me more about the long haul versus transactional. Why does it matter? And move it beyond, not just your partner inside your company, but also if you have agencies that you’re working with, and having those long-term relationships with agencies as well.

John Coyne:

Yeah, absolutely. So I have spent much of my career working…and this is ironic, because I’m not really a tech person. I can barely get my computer to work most days…but I’ve spent most of my career working with tech companies. You know, Apple, HP, Cisco, Adobe, at Intel. And we have really complex businesses. Technology companies are complex. We talk to many different audiences. We have global businesses. The technology is complicated to figure out. And my experience has been that, by having long-term partners together, we’re able to really kind of get to those deeper understandings of how the technology actually works, what it’s actually enabling, the much deeper insights with our audiences in terms of how to really talk about the technology in a way that’s relevant. And my experience is that to get to those insights and to be able to deliver that kind of work, you’ve got to get deep in the business.

John Coyne:

We don’t have a lot of success, certainly, at Intel, and not other companies I’ve worked with where you’ve got teams just kind of parachuting in and out. Just because what I find is typically, creative people almost have to work through the obvious ideas, because they don’t really have a depth of understanding. You kind of have to work through all of these obvious ideas and routes first before you get to the stuff that’s really good underneath that. And we just don’t have time for that. Our business moves so fast, the timelines that we’re operating under are under such pressure to move faster, that I find that we have the ability to move fastest, at the best depth, with the work that has the most integrity, with teams that really are partners with us. And not just kind of transactional thinkers, if that makes sense.

Adam:

Oh, totally. In fact, what you talk about is really interesting because you think about the life cycle of a B2B buying…purchasing decision is usually like a year and a half. And then we think we can just swoop in and have a B2C mindset of just like, “Oh yeah, let’s just tell a quick fun story.” And it just doesn’t work. It doesn’t. And tell me more, because you brought up an interesting topic, which is, it’s not just having longevity on your team, but also your partners, meaning agencies. And talk to me about agency of record, because that is not very common today. Like back in the day, there were a lot of relationships between the agencies and brands that were long-term, but it is more transactional these days and it has changed. So let’s hear more how that helps build the environment by having that relationship.

John Coyne:

Yeah. So at Intel, one of the things that we were able to do last year is really look at our creative needs across the board. And Intel’s a big company. We create a lot of content. We do a lot of work, some of it highly visible on very, very visible, high-profile property. And some of it…pretty deep and niche, to really niche audiences. We serve everybody from grandma wanting to buy a PC in Italy, to data scientists in PRC and everybody in between. So we really have a complex creative need. So we obviously work with a variety of creative agencies to help us deliver that portfolio of work that we need. And we had a review last year after kind of assessing our agency roster and made a decision to have a global creative review for an agency of record that we can begin migrating the majority of our business into.

John Coyne:

And we did that because we saw in the analysis that we did, that Intel was showing up, we call it instead of one Intel, it was many Intels. We were just showing up very fractured, not clear who the brand was. We looked different, depending on what agency and what group inside Intel was creating work. We looked like a different company every time. So one of the decisions that we made was to try to consolidate as much as possible into an agency and a network so that we can start getting some real consistency and in the work horizontally across all of these different campaigns and content, social, and everything else. So through that process, we brought on board VMLY&R, our global agency of record, and we are really able to scale with them across so much more work.

John Coyne:

And for my team, that engagement is a lot more efficient because we don’t have to reinvent the wheel and conversations every time that we have a new project to start up. I’m dealing with the same senior leadership team. We’re able to ramp up teams quickly on different assignments and just to be able to move so much faster and then have the work elevate and be delivering a consistent brand message, no matter what we’re doing. No matter even if it’s a nurture campaign that we’re running in Germany, it still has to approve back to the brand and leverage the brand. I found that this was difficult for us to make that happen. And we ended up with work that was not attached to anything else at Intel. So one of the ways to help solve that was to kind of bring this all together.

John Coyne:

And what we’re finding is that we’re also able to get our agency partners deeper into the business. So one of the things I fundamentally believe in, and I’ve learned this through my whole career on the agency side, I found that we did our best work, whether it was at BBDO or Goodby, when we got deep into the business. I didn’t want to be the agency that just showed up for the creative meeting in a conference room and then you leave. I wanted to make sure that we were present in the halls of the company, being invited into meetings that probably you wouldn’t have even thought to include us in. But that’s how we got a depth of understanding about the business challenges. Because the things you find that…What we’re worried about every day on the client side is so much deeper and more complex than what most of our agencies get exposed to.

John Coyne:

So I wanted to make sure that we were as in deep on the business as we could, and then that helped us connect back to deliver creative work. It was really able to be seen not just as great creative ideas, which we strive to deliver on, but that it was clear what the tie back was to what an executive inside the company is concerned about. And so that’s one of the things that I really wanted to solve by bringing VMLY&R on, is to get them really deep into the business, building relationships, getting to know our key executives, again, all in the spirit of better ideas, more global consistency, and moving faster. We just have to move faster and we don’t have to worry about the ramp up time every time we want to bring a new group on to take on a new assignment.

John Coyne:

Now, that said, I look at every assignment that comes in and if I feel like we don’t have the perfect match in house for something new that we need to do, we’re always looking and always open.

Adam:

Sure.

John Coyne:

You know, what else we might need to bring in. So I don’t ever want to be in a position of kind of force fitting a square peg in a round hole, so to speak. If we don’t have the right creative solution for a particular problem that we’ve got to solve, then we’ve got to go figure out how to go get that. So at the same time, I’m always open.

Adam:

Well, that’s awesome. Let’s switch gears a little bit now. I want to talk a little bit more about creating a culture. So once you got the relationships in line, once you’ve got the deeper knowledge of the product, now talk to me about how you create a culture where ideas thrive? What are the things that you do? How do you bring it together, all the work behind the scenes that you have to take care of in order to create that culture, and what is the right culture, in your mind?

John Coyne:

Yeah. Honestly to me, culture is almost the biggest variable of success for us inside a company and for an agency, to be able to come in and to be able to succeed. And by the way, we do have a small internal team as well. So we do some internal making as well as working with external agencies. So, my team has the privilege of getting to manage all of that. And so I’m always very cognizant of the environment because we all know that ideas live or die based on how you nurture them. And part of that nurturing process is the culture that your creative people are bringing ideas into.

John Coyne:

So we tried really hard to build a culture of risk taking, which is especially hard at big companies. Big companies like predictability and they like success, and they kind of like everything to work. And yet that doesn’t necessarily get you to those kind of new, just kind of blue sky places that can really exponentially help you to grow your business. So we really work hard to create a culture of risk-taking, and make sure that on our side, on the Intel side, that we set the expectation, even with our agencies, that we’re ready to be pushed. We want to push each other. So please challenge us. Bring us thinking that we haven’t seen before. Stretch us into places that we’re really uncomfortable with. So that’s something that we’re really cognizant that we do and set up that culture.

John Coyne:

The other thing that we’re very focused on is building a kind of a culture of building. And what I mean by that is, it’s very easy for us as clients that…well, let’s pretend we’re when we all sat around a room together at a conference table and could look at each other eye to eye. But obviously you can apply the same thing to the way we all work virtually. But it’s very easy for us to sit around a table and become judges. And where we put on our judging hat, we know what the strategy is. You know, we’re looking at the ideas and we start evaluating them and kind of picking ideas apart. And again, there’s got to be an element of course, of…we’ve got to be able to evaluate ideas and decide whether they’re right or not, but I really encourage our teams to come into those meetings, not with kind of their judging hat on, but really with their building kind of hat on. And what I mean by that is, to start looking for what you can add or look for…There may not be an idea in the room or on the video conference that’s exactly right. But there may be a thread in the setup somewhere. There could be something buried in a social execution somewhere that actually could be the key to unlocking that bigger idea that we’re all looking for.

John Coyne:

And if we just have that mindset of we’re just here to judge, pass/fail ideas as they come to us, we’re really going to miss out on that opportunity to build together and find that interesting nuance that might be buried underneath something. So we really try to build a culture of building, as opposed to kind of judging and evaluating.

Adam:

How do you do that?

John Coyne:

And I find that to be… And I think creative people respond so much better, and are so much more willing to bring their little babies into the room, for us to play with and spend time with, if they know that they’re going to be treated respectfully and have the chance to, have the best opportunity for those ideas really to thrive.

Adam:

And I think sometimes it’s easy to say, “Build a culture that’s great for risk-taking and all this stuff.” But talk to me more about what you’re actually doing behind the scenes. How are you preparing other leaders? How are you modeling this? How are you setting the tone in meetings? I think that’s a really interesting angle of how you create that perfect opportunity.

John Coyne:

Yeah. Well, on the risk taking side, any company will get, in the end, what they decide to measure and evaluate. So one of the things that’s really important that we’re doing at Intel, is we are actively rewarding people for risk-taking. And so we’re even…We set up a meeting recently where we’re looking, how do we start publicly rewarding and awarding people and teams for risk-taking, for things that they’ve tried that may not even have succeeded, but it was brave, it took a lot of courage and again, it was informed by data and thoughtful analysis, and decision-making. It isn’t just a wild idea, give me some credit for that. It’s got to be really thoughtful and thought out, but really rewarding and awarding people for those risk-taking ideas.

John Coyne:

So that’s one of the things that we’re doing, and that’s one of the best ways to build that into your culture, is to make sure you’re…Give people awards for taking risks and trying things because that catches fire. Because it tells the rest of the organization, “We’re really serious about this idea of risk taking. It isn’t just lip service.” Because it’s very easy to say, “Yeah, we want you to take risks.” But the minute something doesn’t work, we’re like all over you. Like, “Well why didn’t that work?”

Adam:

What were you thinking? Why? Yes.

John Coyne:

That’s the surest fire way to make sure that that team never takes another risk again. And what you’ll get in that case is your agencies will be hesitant to bring those really kind of scary, crazy ideas to you because they just think you’re not open to them, and you really don’t want to hear those. So, that’s a really important thing that we’re doing. And I think the other thing is, I recognize kind of my role as a leader shepherding the creative product inside a big company, is I try to set a tone in a meeting that puts people in, again, kind of a building and more of a buying mood.

John Coyne:

And what I mean by that is just, we’re all dealing with a lot of things in the course of our day. We’re under stress, many of us are teaching our kids, and then we’re moving right into like a Zoom meeting to present. So we’re all juggling so many things, we’re all under such stress, it’s easy to bring that stress into a creative review. And I try to work hard to get people to a mindset where we can set that aside and try to position meetings where we’re going to be looking at creative work, as really kind of something to be anticipated and to look forward to, and really kind of a little bit of joy in the middle of our day, and to really kind of tee things up that way. So trying to set a culture inside of Intel, where people are coming to creative meetings excited, and wanting to come in and look at creativity and build, and to bring their energy to the table.

John Coyne:

So that can be a challenge, given all the things that we are dealing with, but it’s something that I’m very cognizant as a leader, as a creative leader, is to set that culture and that environment that people are there because they’re excited to engage with creative work. And then I find that through the process of that, that we just get to better creative outcomes as a result of it. But it is, it can be a challenge. People are, we are way too busy, or way too scheduled. Everybody’s stressed. I just try to keep as much of that out of the room as possible.

Adam:

And talk to me about the pre-work, because it’s not just a matter of saying, “Hey, we’re going to have fun in this meeting. Everyone come in and be a builder.” But I assume there’s so much work you have to do, especially with leaders and getting approvals up the chain. You’ve got to prepare those people long before that meeting ever happens. Right?

John Coyne:

Yeah. It’s just so important for any leader, in any organization, no matter what we’re doing. We all have kind of a chain of command that, whatever you’re working on, to get it approved and get it live in the world. Certain people are going to have to buy off on it and feel good about it. So it’s really important to do the work ahead of time so that you really understand what success looks like for those key people that need to kind of buy off on whatever it is that you’re working on. So that’s the work that has to happen outside of conference rooms or Zoom meetings where ideas are being shared, where you’ve got to be having conversations well in advance, understanding what it is that different executives, or decision-makers in the process are looking for.

John Coyne:

What do they need? What does success look like for them? What are their fears? What things went wrong last time? They might’ve engaged on this project and they didn’t get what they wanted. They could be coming into the room with that in their head. So you kind of want to help people work through those things so that when they are engaging again in the creative process, that they’re able to see what it is that success looks like for them in the room somewhere, in the strategic setup, in the creative idea and the tie-back to the business problem that they’re wrestling with.

Adam:

Talk more about that. Talk more about that, because that was an important thing you said when we talked earlier. I was like, “How do you tie creativity to business outcomes?” And you went through… There is depth there in how you get those leaders on board, and tying… “Oh, creativity solves this.”

John Coyne:

Yeah, I mean the reality is, we’re all in business. We’re held accountable to driving revenue and accomplishing our financial goals and our targets. And I don’t know any leader that is not thinking about that. And particularly at a company like Intel, where we’re an engineering company, a technology company, maybe unlike a P&G, or unlike some packaged goods companies, marketing is not as built out and as recognized as just technology and engineering. Totally makes sense. So it’s important that we do a great job of making sure that those leaders that are more technically minded and very focused on driving business goals, that there’s a very clear throughline between what they’re focused on every day and what they’re worried about, to how this creative work and how this campaign, or this content is going to help them accomplish that goal.

John Coyne:

And we need to really make sure that there’s a very evident kind of red thread that connects that. So part of that, you’ve got to do that work in advance. So you’ve got to know what that executive is concerned about, what their goals are, what they’re trying to drive. You’ve really got to understand the business. And then once you understand that, then working with the strategy team and then the creative teams, just making sure that strategic thinking is going to help unlock that business opportunity, and for that particular audience that we’re trying to reach and move. It ultimately has to be a visible link back to that business problem and that challenge. And that’s where to me, the deep partnership comes in, because the more our agency partners understand the business and the business challenges and that transformation that we may be trying to make as a company, they’re going to be able to bring and reflect that thinking in all of their internal conversations, which adds a level of depth and sophistication to all the creative ideas. And so that red line, that throughline, is just really critical.

Adam:

Now another thing that we’d talked about that was interesting is, setting the environment, setting the tone, setting the example, all those things are great, risk-taking. Another aspect is decision-making. So talk to me about your experience, not naming names or specific brands, or times in your life, but where you see top-down decision-making versus bottoms up, and the difference of what that makes in creating an environment for creativity.

John Coyne:

Yeah, that’s a great question, because we’re all working within a culture of, every company functions a little differently. And I find that the best thinking and the best work happens kind of not in either a top-down or a bottoms-up way, but somehow that we’re able to kind of bring those things together. Because the reality is what doesn’t work, which is not a great repeatable formula, is when we just have top-down decision-making, and kind of authority, and kind of dictating what we do. That may work on kind of a project by project, big strategic moment, but it doesn’t scale very well, because what it leaves out are those working teams, that are the ones that really have to make these ideas come to life, and really have to execute particularly in global companies, which I spent a lot of time working with. Those working teams, kind of from the bottom up, are the ones who ultimately are responsible for how that idea comes to life in a given market, And ultimately kind of the day to day decisions are made, but ultimately become that end work product.

John Coyne:

And so I find you’ve got to have support at the top for what you’re doing. You need to have that air cover and that buy-in to what you’re doing. But you’ve got to have those working teams engaged and motivated, because the last thing that I want is to have teams that are working level, that feel like their ideas don’t matter. Like, “All the decisions are going to be made at the top, and whatever I think isn’t going to matter anyway, because some leader is going to make the decision.” And I’ve seen that. We’ve probably all seen that, when you’ve got that top-down decision-making, and what I have seen happen in those cases are, people sit on their hands. We hire amazing people, and then they’re afraid to share their thinking and their ideas. Well, why did they feel that way? Well, because the last time they did it, they were basically, kind of cut off at the knees and told how that thinking isn’t right. Or they were just ignored and the decision was made despite what they were saying.

John Coyne:

So it’s really important to get that leadership at the top, but you’ve got to… The scale happens, and those working teams leaning in, bringing their thinking, having their great ideas, because also, tied back to culture, that’s what makes a culture vibrant and alive and happy and joyful. Everybody comes to work every day feeling like they can make a difference. That their ideas can really matter and that a great idea can come truly from anywhere. So we work really hard to build a culture where everybody understands their role and everybody shows up with, again, that idea of leaning in to help build. A top-down doesn’t scale and then what it ends up doing, you destroy the culture that you’re building in an organization when you want people to show up to work every day but yet sideline their thinking.

Adam:

And I know I started the question with decision-making, but I think it’s more than that, you’re right. You hit on some topics of when you want to scale, you have to have the accountability and the authority, right. So people have to have ownership of some things so it’s not just one person that top owns everything, not just decisions but strategy where we’re going, all of those great ideas. So you need to have some ownership. So I found like on my teams at least just giving some ownership to everyone helps a lot.

Adam:

And then also accountability, meaning I can say you’re in charge of this project or you’re in charge of this product, but there’s to be accountability where I’m going to follow up and say, “Did you do what you said you’re going to do and make sure you fulfill all that stuff.” And then the last thing I want to talk on this is probably our last questions we’re getting here on time, is the last thing you said is, “Everyone can be creative. Everyone has ideas.” But when we talked earlier, it’s also like, everyone has different types of ideas. And so talk to me about bringing the right people in the room in order to improve success and getting not just everyone in the room, but how do we get the right people in the room?

John Coyne:

That’s always so tough, particularly in big companies and many people listening, either working or work with large companies and large companies tend to scale lots of people in meetings. If you’re not careful, you easily have a meeting with 40 people all Zooming in or on a call and yet there may be eight, nine people in the room that are actually there to help make a decision or to share thinking that ultimately leads to somebody being able to make a decision. So I actually find those meetings are really demoralizing and discouraging to an organization.

John Coyne:

We’re all scheduled so much, our schedules are so packed with meetings, I really encourage our teams to really be in the meetings that you really have a role, and again, if you are not just tops-down leading, but you’re empowering those working teams, there are plenty of meetings for your team members and all your partners to engage, to help move a project along because it does take a small army sometimes to bring something big to market. So there’s plenty of opportunities for team members to engage and contribute but it’s not everybody in every meeting. So you really do need to break the workflow down and try and figure out, where am I in this development process? And who’s critical at every stage.

John Coyne:

And you’ve got to map out the working team to the leadership team, the executives, all in this journey to ultimately making a decision in the end. But my rule of thumb is you should have the people in the room that are either there to help share and present and bring an idea of thinking or creative idea forward and have the people that need to help make a decision there. And if you’re not one of those people go focus on something else, go take a break, take a walk, walk your dog. I also find people are more interesting people at work when they can make a little head space to go do something else and so there’s plenty of things people can be doing when you don’t have 40 people all piled into a room with 32 of them having no real role except to listen.

Adam:

Listening in, yeah. Well, this’s been great, some of the things, just to recap, what we’ve talked about in building an environment for creative ideas to thrive, it starts with relationships, long-term relationships, it’s setting the mood as a leader, it’s going and doing all the pre-work, making sure you get everyone on board. It’s encouraging people to come to meetings with a builder hat rather than just a judging hat.

Adam:

It’s also bringing the right people into the room, it’s empowering them, bringing working teams up and making sure everyone’s balanced and has accountability and ownership, all of those things. These are great topics of how do you build that environment and it all starts with you as a leader. It all starts with you setting the tone, setting up the culture, making sure all of that’s going to happen. So I think that these are awesome ideas. Thank you so much, John, for sharing all of this.

John Coyne:

Always a pleasure, it’s a privilege to be able to be in a creative business. Honestly, I feel like every day I get to come to work or walk into my office, which is about 20 steps from my bedroom. Every day I get to be here, you just have an opportunity to do something that’s really fascinating and interesting and has the chance to impact culture and I just think we are all privileged to be in this position.

John Coyne:

It really is an honor and to be able to lead in a position like this, it’s just a life dream. I appreciate everybody you’ve got here in this community engaged with what you’re doing here, this podcast is amazing. Thank you for inviting me in and being able to reconnect and work with you on this as well, Adam.

Adam:

Oh no, I appreciate it. I appreciate your thoughts and you’re right. It’s going to take a community to change the world in terms of elevating creative leadership where we can impact businesses in a positive way more often, so thank you. So last question, if people want to connect with you, what’s the best way for them to find you?

John Coyne:

Well that is a great question. I’d love to hear from people so you can obviously find me on LinkedIn, I’m not too hard to find there and also feel free to drop me an email. I’ll give you my personal email address.

Adam:

Bold.

John Coyne:

Yes, please. John J Coyne, C, O, Y, N, E 64@gmail.com.

Adam:

Oh, excellent.

John Coyne:

And I’d love to hear from you and honestly, if you’ve got any ideas, questions, please send them my way.

Adam:

That’s excellent, all right. Well, let’s end this episode. Thank you everyone for hanging in there with us, there’s been some great stuff here. As always, you can go to Real Creative Leadership.com and in the show notes, you can get any of the links that we’ve talked about or any of the topics and just follow up and go back over it. You can find this on YouTube, on your favorite podcast platform, wherever you’re listening, we appreciate you joining in.

Adam:

And as always, our final ask is if you are listening in and you enjoy this content please share, like, approve, give good reviews, whatever it is that you can do to help show that this movement of bringing creative leadership to a higher level is important. If it’s important to you, your actions will help guide it and help us make more content and reach out to more people. So we appreciate you listening in. Thank you so much, John, for joining us. This was an awesome episode, as always this was brought to you by The Stoke Group. They handle all the production on this and we appreciate their partnership in creating this great show.

Adam:

And I’m Adam Morgan, executive creative director at Adobe. You can reach me at my website, adamwmorgan.com, or follow me on any of these other Real Creative Leadership platforms. So thanks for joining, and next time, we’re going to talk a little bit deeper about creating an environment and digging even more. So thank you, John, for setting the stage of what we can learn about in creating an environment for creativity.

John Coyne:

My pleasure, thank you everybody, thanks Adam.

Adam:

We’ll see you all later, thanks.

John Coyne:

Bye.