DDB PH Talks

Today, Craig offers two papers to ponder. One, the art of giving and receiving advice and two, a robust paper which puts a view about balancing short and long-term marketing strategies.

To ensure a longer, healthier life and career, think about increasing your skill levels around the topics featured in today's TBS ThinkPiece.

The advantages of a longer attention span cannot be overstated. Multitasking, whilst an impressive ability, has been debunked as a productivity killer today. The better we can focus on one task at a time, the more productive we become. Read on, briefly, to find out more.

Today Craig puts a view that supports our conviction - creativity is the most powerful force in business.

Today Craig talks about mind over matter - the power of the mind, overcoming challenges or problems.

Today Craig takes a swing at defining Unexpected Works - DDB's promise - as it relates to us.

Today Craig points out, our minds matter.

You've perhaps spent these past months consumed with seemingly endless client errands or fielding questions from finance enquiring as to whether you'll meet your Q1 targets. Could it be you've put everyone and everything well ahead of you and your aspirations this year? Today, Craig encourages you to consider having a career discussion, with yourself.

In 2023, smart business leaders will get focused - pruning efforts that aren't bearing fruit and prioritizing long-term growth. Read on assuming this is of interest.

Over this past week, Craig been in the garden, pruning native evergreens. Read on and you'll get the meaning of the adage - to prune is to promote.

Ever wondered if its remotely possible your finance and creative leads could agree on the definition of performance. Well, today is that day. Finally, Craig has the case study to prove it.

Recently I read with curiosity, this excellent piece which talks of improving brainstorming with constructive criticism. It poses the question, does criticism help or hinder creativity in brainstorming?

I always sit up straight when GGC talks of servant leadership. His writings and actions perpetually inspire me. In further support of Gil's enduring conviction, here's a piece written by Jim Heskett – Professor Emeritus HBS.

Today, Craig invites us to consider some research-based leadership advice (from the military), suggesting leaders should follow the science and take a structured approach to hiring for, promoting, and developing employee happiness.

Positively, contemplating your demise will sharpen your vision forward.

Today, Craig's Back to the Future missive.

Continuing his military theme over recent times, Craig understands many of you are involved in family businesses, here's some learnings to consider. In trying times, family tensions often surface, exposing underlying fissures, which may lead to more divisiveness. From adversity can come unification. Listen or read on for Craig's thoughts.

It pains me to say, one of the side effects of the pandemic, given we've been either homing to work or operating in a hybrid mode these past few years - yes, I do think leaders find themselves enabling echo chambers. Read on, or listen, if you'd like to hear some thoughts on changing our behaviours.

If you have an interest in the growth of our clients and enhancing your career, read on.

Today Craig talks of the serenity of place, people and past.

If you are content with staying in our lane, never hiring before revenue, perpetually being concerned about sourcing, and retaining staff and believing in unexpected works, though acting as expected – do not read this TBS ThinkPiece.

Today is your lucky day to learn more about choice overload, inertia and of course, the nudge.

Craig cannot resist a bookshop.

Today Craig talks about the getting of wisdom.

Craig advocates you will encounter a Rob Parson at some point in your career. The question posed today is to promote or not, a person with remarkable abilities to deliver noteworthy revenues, who has scant regard for culture. What would you do?

Today Craig talks of engagement and rebel talent. He wishes we'd ask ‘could' rather than ‘should' more often, when exploring or prosecuting a client's business challenges. If we did, we'd generate better creative solutions.

The other day Craig stumbled upon a business proposal surrounding organizational behaviour change he wrote a few years back for Tribal and a prospective client. The paper talked of peak performance, something Tribal is unquestionably accustomed to. Craig shares a few convictions we know to be true and a couple of rhetorical questions to ponder.

I thought it may be valuable for you to ponder this presentation summary entitled customer journeys in an omnichannel world.

Today Craig puts a view on how we can put our long history to work for a brighter future.

Diversity is a fact, inclusion is a behaviour, belonging is the emotional outcome people want as we evolve out of the pandemic, building refreshed workforces. Today, Craig offers a supporting view.

Today, Craig and the supporting article asks us to consider the question, what is the value of time in advertising? Timing is always important when talking of stand-up comedy or straight up business.

Deep focus equally applies to film making or business. The definition being, a technique of photography which permits all distance planes to remain clearly in focus, from close-up range to infinity. Today, Craig invites us to consider leveraging data to aid decision making while driving innovation and business results.

As your teams prepare their 2023 operating plans surrounding responses to VOICE, for inspiration, here's some thoughts and five questions that will help you drive growth.

Many of you know Craig's view of culture – being a combination of behaviors – how we behave, beliefs – what's important to the business and its people and decisions – how we make choices surrounding the business. Today Jim Heskett (Professor Emeritus HBS) and Craig offer their pure and applied views on culture and engagement.

Craig knows there's an entrepreneurial streak in many of you, a hankering to start up your new dream business. Here's a tried and tested template to formulate your thoughts, with the view to pitching your idea to potential investors or to help frame your set up. Craig has even offered to advise any of you on your start up idea.

Today Craig encourages us to re-define value. He puts to us five change quests which deal with global presence, customer focus, innovation, nimbleness and sustainability. Speaking of quests, he leaves us with a few questions to contemplate.

With the view to being prepared, Craig thought you may like to contemplate your responses to the questions posed in the paper attached.

When Craig wrote today's TBS ThinkPiece (on 22 February 2022), it was a cold day (12 degrees in Hong Kong) of numbers and palindromes (words and sentences that maintain the same meaning, whether you read them forward or reverse. Other examples, of course, Anna). It was also a milestone day as he'd just hit the big 30. That is, a few weeks earlier, Craig taught the famous Shouldice Hospital case and the companion models – The Service Profit Chain (SPC) and The Strategic Service Vision (SSV) for the thirtieth time to sharp under-graduates. Learning all the time, here's what Craig's students said about their study of Shouldice Hospital.

Attached is a thought-provoking piece on client – agency relationships. I invite you to devote the next 13 minutes to reading it. You'll be more the wiser.

Status quo bias is evident when people prefer things to stay the same by doing nothing or tinkering around the edges to convince themselves of forward motion or by sticking with decisions made previously, often years, even decades before. Today Craig talks change, making the case there's no time like the present.

Craig's unashamed plug for the unrecognized growth potential of The Bernbach School (TBS).

Most effective leaders do not leave happiness to chance. They manage their own levels of life satisfaction for higher levels of effectiveness and career endurance. And, of course, they manage the well-being of those they lead for both ethical and practical reasons. Today, Craig offers some thoughts to counter disappointment, uncertainty, and loneliness.

Today's TBS ThinkPiece talks about cognition- the mental action or process of acquiring knowledge and understanding through thought, experience, and the senses.

Today's TBS ThinkPiece is devoted to and in support of people of a certain age, baby boomers, those you sometimes think should consider retiring. Channeling Mark Twain – “age is an issue of mind over matter. If you don't mind, it doesn't matter”.

Today, Craig encourages us to think about becoming more self-absorbed.

As ideas can come from anywhere, so too can talented people, particularly these days as a result of the pandemic. Let's ‘make it so', evangelized by Jean-Luc Picard of Star Trek fame.

Craig has read all of General McChrystal's books which cover different aspects of leadership. His new one, Risk: A User's Guide by General Stanley McChrystal (US Army, retired). I'm about a third of the way through it. I couldn't wait until the end to tell you about it.

Today Craig makes his case for talking small as we gingerly creep back to the office.

The subject of biometrics has been gripping Craig these past few months. As is the case throughout the world technology leads; privacy laws, governance and ethics tend to lag. To kick off our third season of TBS ThinkPiece, Craig talks us through his views on the future of identity.

Today's TBS TP is a tale of two Roger's, encouraging us all to think up.

Today Craig channels memories of C5.