Me and My Shadow

Even today, with the benefit of psychological profiling tools like Myers-Briggs, I notice that so often managers hire people in their own image. This can be comfortable, but it’s unlikely to be very potent in terms of innovation or leadership.

In my own case, I noticed quite early on that the partnership I had with Jennifer Laing at Saatchi and Saatchi was extraordinarily effective. Yet in personality type we were quite different. Somehow or other her strengths mirrored my weaknesses and vice-versa. Everything we touched turned to business.

And I’ve been lucky enough to have had a number of these symbiotic relationships later in my “career” – with Max Gosling at Lintas, with David Walker at Synectics, and now with Alison Duffy at Per Diem. In each case these partnerships have been associated with periods of major innovation and of sustained business success.

Of course, there is a great elephant trap involved in this. As polarised personalities it’s quite likely that you’ll not appreciate each other, maybe even disliking each other. So unless there is genuine mutual admiration, a real appreciation of the value of the other, and a shared sense of direction, success is unlikely to follow.

Knowing which is me and which is shadow in any given situation can be tricky. Flexibility as to who leads and who follows can be a moment by moment thing.

Do you have a terrific shadow?

Neophobic – what me?

“There is no standard development nowadays of elegant letter writing, as there used to be… It is a sort of go as you please development, and the result is atrocious.” Who wrote this and what is it attacking? Is it an attack on SMS text messaging? Or Twitter? Or emails?

No – in fact it’s in a letter from a woman at the end of the nineteenth century, complaining about the supposed “dumbing down” effect of the then newfangled medium of postcards.

Neophobic attacks of that sort are launched every day – against new forms of communication, new products, new ways of working, new technologies, even new words. I even find myself doing it, unable to cope (at least initially) with the pace of change. My business partner at Per Diem, Alison Duffy, is currently in thrall to her recently-acquired iPhone, and takes every opportunity to expound its virtues. Will I get one myself? Maybe…

Of course, word of mouth support for a new product is the most powerful form of marketing, one completely out of the control of the marketer. But ranting against an innovation makes zero difference to the outcome. In the end the market always decides.

What’s new that gets your goat? And will you be able to move on, maybe even embracing it?