Fame.

In a global survey a few years ago, when asked what they wanted to be when they grew up, young children responded with one wish.

To be famous.

What they wanted to be famous for is beside the point; they simply wanted fame.

I can’t blame them. Fame is a persuasive muse. She blows in your ear and it’s hard to get her out of your head. She makes every shortcut look like a sure thing. And if you choose to believe her, you happen to be in extraordinary luck: We were born into an era when fame has never ever been so easy to grasp.

With social media, fame is found quickly, too. We’re all just one post away from being everything we’ve ever wanted.

More likes.

More subscribers.

More followers.

Every 15 minutes.

Oops, every five.

And then, another five minutes right after that.

If you happen to already be famous, well, why aren’t you MORE famous? From sun to star to supernova? There’s always a bit brighter to shine — even if the whole thing feels like blinding klieg lights in a hall of mirrors.

All this, not surprisingly, has a dark side. Fame blinds many of us before we even start.

“Mark Zuckerberg had it all by 23,” the 24-year-old says. “I missed my chance.”

And they're right. They did miss their chance — to be famous by 24. Like billions of others.

But, as blasphemous as it might sound, they will be better off for it.

Stop me if you’ve heard this one: A young creative person, through talent, work, luck and good timing, makes a wildly popular...thing. This thing wins big – huge at awards shows. They’re quoted in the press. They amass thousands of new followers. A giant, once celebrated ad agency swoops in, gives them a title well beyond their years, and assumes they can fix everything that’s wrong with their work/department/people/process/company/ client (you name it) because they’re famous.

They must be doing something right. Right?

No. Not really.?

All the fame in the world won’t solve the deep cultural mess or complex client problems they were hired to fix. And that big title won’t turn them into the type of creative leader we are in such short supply of.

But it’s not our hypothetical young creative person’s fault. They’re just following the road signs we’ve all put up. It’s us. We’ve come to conflate the addiction to fame with the achievement of something else. A word we don’t hear that much in the rush to win Best of Show.

We confuse fame with mastery.

Now there’s a word. Mastery.

Simply put: The people who I was honored to awards to over the last two weeks, including the Black Cube at The?Art?Directors?Club?and Yellow Pencils at D&AD, are mastering their craft. A little bit of fame for a job well done. All good.

But let’s be clear. Fame and mastery are not equal.

Fame is a spotlight. Mastery is the sun. Both grab your attention. But only one will hold it. Both illuminate a thing. But only one is the thing, itself.

Mastery, ultimately, is what matters. What people remember, love, and might even be transformed by.

How is that achieved?

Mastery, like wisdom, takes time — the time to create, to protect, and to deliver great work, together. Time and time again. And again.

Where fame likes to parrot other people’s ideas, mastery uses time to poke holes in what’s possible, then pushes you through so you can find new ideas. Your own ideas.

The people who won last week know this. Time is teaching them how to create. That it is only by doing what you do over and over and over again — by succeeding and failing and succeeding — by collecting the tricks and talismans and relationships you find along the way, that's how you learn how to consistently create the conditions for great work to be made.

While fame likes the path of fast, least resistance, mastery understands that everything is a kind of battle. It uses time to steel you for the fight so you can get the best work—the right work—out the door.

Time teaches you how to protect good ideas.

We have been honored with a number of awards. It is always, always, always nice. And I hope it will always be shocking to us. I hope we never take anything for granted. Because winning anything doesn’t mean that you don’t fight damn hard for your work every day. It now just means that you now might know how to fight for it a little better. And in that fight, my colleagues and I have learned this: The search for mastery will only reward those who never so much as lean, let alone sit, on a laurel.

If fame is self-congratulatory, mastery knows it can never let up until all the time is up, because excellence is defined less by one’s imagination and more by hard work and sweat. Ideas are easy. There’re everywhere. Craft, however, is hard. And just that kind of craft was all over the world’s very, very best work.?

My deepest admiration to those who seek the sun.

And, congratulations to those who found it in New York City and London.

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(Note: An extra thank you to my gifted colleague, writer and creative leader Tom Elia, who works with me and all of us at COLLINS us to shape the indecipherable into something real. He, along with writers and leaders Madeleine Carrucan and Tim Cairns, sit at the very center of our work.)