Ralph Ardill, founder of The Brand Experience Consultancy reflects on his career so far and offers a personal definition of what good design leadership means to him
Read the transcript below
Morning. Sum up everything you know about design leadership in 15 minutes, a bit of a challenge. I’ll break this into three sections, two of which will be a little bit about what I’ve been doing, to give me some kind of credentials for standing here today, sharing what I’ve learnt with you. I’ll talk a bit about some projects that I’ve lead, some work that I’m currently leading, and then I’ll sum up with what I’ve learnt about design leadership over the last 20 years.
I suppose I’m best known for ten years that I spent at Imagination. Prior to Imagination I got a degree in geo-physics, I spent a little while as a business analyst for Laura Ashley, managed pop groups for CBS records and did a little bit of work in corporate identity. All which stood me in good stead for a decade here, where I probably lead – I tried to count them up actually – I personally lead about 200 projects and probably as many pitches as well, as well as the international growth and development of the agency.
Thought Leadership’s always been pretty big on my agenda. I authored this thing in the mid ‘90s. A book on experience, which was really – I suppose – part of a big journey for me in terms of pioneering a whole genre of design thinking around experiential design. I lead the opening of the Tate Modern – I’m going to click through these, because I think it’s the juicy bit at the end on leadership that you want.
I lead quite an extraordinary project for the re-development of a disused building for Guinness in St. James’s Gate Brewery, Dublin, which has now become Ireland’s number one visitor attraction.
And little stuff as well. Imagination used to do little things, it’s just that people never used to talk about them very much. This was a pack of cards that I was really proud of, that we developed for London Underground, which was part of a bigger project to transform the diet of train drivers who eat a lot of carbs and fall asleep at the wheel if you’re not careful. So the ability of trying to enter their space, give them a pack of cards with diet information, I actually thought was really inspirational.
These days – slightly less salubrious offices – that’s my studio. And three years ago I set up my own consultancy which was really – I suppose – a big step change for me. In moving away from doing experiential projects, to starting to work more long term with organisations on helping them develop more experiential enterprises.
Still doing some Thought Leadership work with Cool Brands and the British Council of Shopping Centres. People have been asking me, ‘what do you do after the Guinness Storehouse?’ Well this is one project I’m currently leading. Working with Elevating East Lancashire, which is the regeneration of a cluster of disused cotton mills, which will – I suppose – effectively be an Eden Project for the re-launch of Pennine Lancashire, as a major initiative and part of a ten year strategy we’re developing. I lead the project, which was really the design of the business, from scratch.
That is now Global Cool, which was looking at creating a really compelling consumer brand in the carbon economy. There’s lots of governments and big businesses trying to tell us how to live low energy lifestyles, but unless we make that aspirational it’s not going to happen.
The whole re-imagining of a northern clothing firm called Regatta, which is – I suppose – really an anti-brand of Breath of Fresh Air, against the North Faces of this world. Again a very interesting ten year strategy that I’m working on with Country Estates in Shropshire, which will be looking at half a dozen businesses that are going to spin out of that; including organic products, new eco-business units, and eco-housing.
Back in Manchester – which is my home town – which is good, good northern brewery; J W Lees. I’ve been working with them for three years now as, effectively, a non exec brand director. And that’s involved everything from culture change, all the branding, communications, product and service design. And I was just saying to Mat recently, just designed the new menu as well, which is quite interesting when you start obsessing about the bacon, and the size and shape of it, on a plate.
And most recently I’ve also been a brand director of the new science gallery at Trinity College in Dublin. Which is a quite extraordinary place which is really looking at trying to engage a cynical young audience with science, in quite an extraordinary way; and the latest show we’ve just put in the bottom right is Techno Threads which is really looking at the collision of fashion and technology. It’s very brave, it’s very controversial, and we’ve been open six months and it’s so far so good.
[Unclear] in history getting to the meat of it, what have I learnt along the way about leadership, and there’s endless books and quotes and facts and figures about this, but I think ultimately it’s a personal definition that I’ll share with you. Leadership – loyalty and learning, leaders expect loyalty, but it’s a two way street and one of the things that strikes me about loyalty in organisations, is the tenure of leaders in business is shrinking.
MDs, CEOs, FDs are staying for less and less, and people think you’re just a tourist and you’re passing through. It’s very, very difficult for leaders to engender those loyalties, and what I found is that leaders who stay the course and stay a while, frankly, in an organisation, and earn that loyalty and respect, tend to deliver better results.
Learning – whatever it is that you’ve learnt to become a leader of a project, a team, a business, won’t keep you there. And that’s been something that’s been a real lesson for me, in terms of a real commitment to three new things I need to learn every year. And I think again, complacency and arrogance can creep in quite quickly in leaders, if you don’t have that commitment to continual learning.
Empathy and the extra mile – I think great leaders…one of the gentlemen there said about user needs; I think great leaders have the ability to step out of themselves. And every day I try and spend a couple of minutes now, being the investor, being the consumer, being the project manager, being the finance guy, being the girl in procurement who’s having a hard day today, and really trying to understand the project experience from their perspective, not just the design aspect of it. It really, really helps. You also tend to pick up a bit of the language doing that as well which also helps.
And going the extra mile to do that; it’s really, really easy to talk about understanding consumer needs, but it’s not just a consumer. There’s a whole collaboration of people involved in projects. You need to understand the needs of procurement, and operations, and finance, and marketing, and HR, not just consumer needs. There’s a whole series of chapters and a path one has to go through before you get anywhere near the consumer, which is why I think so many good innovations fail.
Action and accountability, there is nothing worse…we’ve all done it, sat in meetings with a so called leader, who doesn’t make any decisions. I actually think the biggest crime leaders can commit, is inactivity. It breeds inertia, it breeds speculation, and it breeds a lack of confidence in organisations. It is actually better to take action, and start moving, and create momentum, and self correct as you go than sit around procrastinating too long. And be accountable for that, don’t duck it. You know, you don’t have to be right all the time but you do have to stand up and take accountability for those decisions. I’ve seen this a lot in project leadership, where very good technical project managers, but not making key decisions the hour they need taking, and the knock on effect and the pain that causes around them.
Dedication in detail. In doing the new, and doing the different, was never meant to be easy and it was never meant to be painless, it’s a really ridiculous way to make a living really. Because you can never replicate and mass produce, you have to go through the whole process again and again. And it is painful, it will hurt, expect it, expect it to hurt. Don’t waiver the minute things go wrong. The number of designers I constantly hear whingeing about, the client’s a nightmare, the project’s a nightmare. Get real! You know, you’re selling change, you’re selling ideas. You know, people need to be accompanied on that journey, not challenged and threatened when they don’t agree with everything you say.
Excite and evangelise - again, there’s a big idea at the heart of every project, every team, every business, every organisation and it is very, very easy to lose that big idea in the cut and thrust of doing. It’s the why, not the how, and the who, and the when, and the where, and the how much. That’s all important, but it is the leaders job to keep the why alive, all the way through, not just at the front end. And, again, particularly on long term projects, and I’ve noticed this with a lot of the work I’m doing now, some of these projects are three, and five, and ten years long. It’s very, very easy six months into it, to forget why you’re doing something. Keep that alive.
Respectful and reliable, they may not be the most glamorous of traits, but I think they’re massively important. Respecting people’s time, talents, energy, money, opinions. Listening was mentioned, a big part of that…and being reliable, doing what you say, turning up when you say you’re going to turn up. It’s quite extraordinary to me how unreliability breeds a lack of ambition in people; when suddenly somebody doesn’t turn up for a meeting, the signal that gives off. Or they’re late, they don’t care, you know. Stick to it.
Success and sharing - again we talk about success as a kind of amorphous concept but success means very different things to people and organisations. I think great leaders understand what success looks like, they can visualise it, they can verbalise it, and they can share the trappings of success. There is no I in team, and there is no I in leader either. And I think again that’s massively important in being able to share that.
Happy and hungry, how happy are you? How happy is your business? How happy is your project team? Bhutan have a gross national happiness quotient. Projects have a happiness quotient, you know, I used to look at huge portfolios of projects, and they would vary from the very happy to the very unhappy, and you have to intervene. You have to do something about positivity, breeds productivity and results. And a team of people working with glasses half full are not going to change the world.
Inspiration and integrity, again, urban myth, I’ve never had a light bulb moment in the shower. I don’t know anybody who ever did. You know, don’t wait for inspiration to come, you go out and look for it. Be quite selfish if you have to be. Create some time and space, get out of the office, get out of work, get out of your comfort zone, and go looking for some inspiration. And integrity, know when to say no. Again, a massive failing of the creative industry, is its inability to say no. Of course we can do that, and then we’ll figure it out in a cab on the way back. You might win the game but, you know, eventually you’ll be ousted. It’ll bring you down, know when to say no, know when to say you don’t know, know when to say you’re sorry and take some pride in that. It’s called integrity.
And finally passionate, again easy business word. You know, passion is a feeling, we all feel it differently. I’m very passionate about guitar playing; I know what that feels like. If I’m not replicating that in my work, if I don’t have that feeling, not all the time, I said it was going to hurt now and again, but a good proportion of the time; if I don’t feel that, and I’ve only got one life and most of it I’m spending working, what on earth am I playing at? And if you’re not feeling passionate a big amount of the time in what you’re doing, do something about it. Life is really too short.
And the last one for me is a simple thing of politeness. And I really do think that the leaders that I’ve worked with, and that I’ve been most impressed by, have a common touch. They have a politeness, they say please, they say thank you, they walk about, they ask people what they’re doing, what they need. It really does matter. You’d be amazed how far a little common courtesy can take you in business. So that’s how I’d spell leadership and, in the spirit of politeness, thanks for your time.