I don’t honestly think of myself as a loser, but I have done my share of losing. I’ve lost baseball games, swimming races, tennis matches, and countless games of Scrabble; Win, Lose or Draw; Cranium; Monopoly – even Candy Land and Chutes and Ladders. And very little upsets me more than getting the Final Jeopardy question wrong (especially when my wife gets it right).
But of all my many losses the ones that hurt the most were the ones I have experienced in brainstorms.
And this includes the time I lost a tennis match to a preppie whose first name was Day (no, I’m not kidding) when my public high school played his private institution. Late in the afternoon our schools were tied 3-3. In other words, they’d won 3 matches and so had we. The winner of my match with Day would determine if gritty public school would beat tony private academy. It was a 3-set match. He won the first set. I won the second. I was ahead 5-0 in the final, all-important set. And I lost 5-7.
Obviously, the loss didn’t leave me with any lasting emotional scars. I am so over it.
But even worse than that was the first time I lost a brainstorm to a guy I’ll call Morley. The second time was pretty bad, too. And losses 3 through 723 were brutal.
But about Morley …
My boss at the time was the agency’s creative director. He’d call these brainstorms and invite five or six folks (including Morley and me) into his office to come up with meeting themes, proposal strategies, marketing plans and so on. For me, the sessions were pure hell. Not because I didn’t have ideas – I did. But Morley was two things that I was not: fast and loud. Over the years, I’ve gotten fairly quick at coming up with ideas, but I will never be as fast as Morley. Furthermore, it’s not in my nature to SHOUT out ideas or monopolize the conversation. Morley was good at both.
What usually happened is my boss and Morley would end up having a one-on-one creative session while the rest of us threw in the towel and waited for the brainstorm to end. Then I’d slink back to my office and pout.
The problem wasn’t Morley. He wasn’t really a bad guy at all – just really smart and really loud. The problem was my boss. The problem was that he allowed Morley to be Morley. He couldn’t help but know that all of us left his brainstorms feeling thoroughly defeated and demoralized. But then again, he might have been clueless.
When I co-founded my own company, I vowed never to allow anyone to leave one of my brainstorms feeling as crappy and unworthy as I used to feel. First, I hired polite, collaborative creative folks. Then I made it abundantly clear that in my brainstorms there would be no winners and losers. Creativity, I told everyone, is a team sport.
I think that by and large I’ve been able to maintain this commitment to collaborative creativity as I’ve transitioned to Compuware and the tech industry. I honestly try not to dominate the conversation. I make an effort to assure that everyone gets heard – regardless of how loudly they speak. I go out of my way to see to it that the words “we” and “our” are spoken far more often than I and me. Do I always succeed? Of course not. But I try. I tell people that I have never had a good idea – but I’ve been on a lot of teams that have had great ideas.
You see, I believe that voicing an idea in a brainstorm can be very, very scary – especially for younger, less-experienced participants. I try to eliminate the fear by making sure that there are no sharks in the creative pond. I used to hate walking out of a brainstorm knowing that I had a pretty good idea to share, but I never got the chance.
Do some people walk out of my brainstorms feeling better than others? Sure – that’s inevitable. Hell, I walk out of a lot of my brainstorms knowing that other people had “better” ideas than I did. And I’m proud of them – not jealous.
The fact is: I’m more creative some days than I am on others. So be it. It’s that way with everyone.
To put it another way: sometimes I kick Day’s butt, and some days he kicks mine.
But my therapist says I’m not supposed to think about that anymore.
Until next time …
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