Art, AI & AdLand: Life, learning and passion from my year leading at Meta

As I come to the close of my contract I thought I'd take a breath and consider what my time has taught me.

Life - Connection beyond location

Stepping in to head up the International team meant I had a team of people covering all Non-North American markets. My team and projects spanned from India, Vietnam, Philippines, South Korea, Japan, to Brazil, UK, Germany and France. As a 13 month contract I had to get up to speed and close to the crew - fast.

Meta (of course) has the tools to enable individuals to connect, across the enterprise the tech works to make conversation easy and actively encourages one-to-one. From Monday morning greetings, official team syncs, timetabled 121s led by the individual team member, regular peer meetings, to quick sharing of inspo and slices of the everyday. All contact big and small was an opportunity to be more understood and real to teams, be they in the same building or a few thousand miles away. Conversation is a super-power for connection. And connection is vital for effective teamwork.?

The added element this year was the width that you have to play as a leader in a large enterprise. As an agency leader there is a clear line of decision making, in essence if the MD, ECD and Head of Strat agree then that is the direction everyone moves in. In large brands there are many stakeholders, with multiple metrics, in many different specialist areas. Unity of viewpoint is not a given. It has to be coaxed (and coached). Energy was needed for the side conversations, bringing all potential vote holders on board before critical moments to keep projects moving towards an agreed goal. Whilst it slowed the conversations and pace of change, it meant you get insight from so many different strata and subsets of this massive company. A chance to listen and learn, and discover areas of commonality essential to driving projects onwards.

Learning - Always learning

What a year to join. As an AI novice-geek it has been such a time to be close to the centre of gravity for this emerging tech behemoth - Gen AI. The relentless pace of change and the need to proactively get out there, shed worries and simply try. Asking the silly questions. Making the daft mistakes, sharing them, learning from them, trying again. From academic courses to simply playing with tools, I’ve dug into the wave that is crashing upon us, remained open, seized opportunities to discover more. How we understand and start to see a way to utilise will give us purchase in this changing landscape.

Is it perfect? Nope. Is it scary? Possibly. But the answer has to be to dive in and learn, make the connections between what the tools can do and how we can benefit from the possibilities, or hack to use for our own devices. From how to apply tech learnings to opportunities in the art industry, or bringing addend approaches to AI answers: standing on the sidelines is not an option, and I'm loving it.

Passion - Breaking barriers

Technology breaks the barriers between things. In so many of the projects I’ve led this year it was the ability for tech to hack what the physical world wouldn’t allow that made the difference. Technology increases accessibility in so many ways (and no, I’m not ignoring that access to tech itself is also a barrier to many). Whether that was the ability to share the rugby passion across the skies of Paris from a million miles away, or enabling rural Brazilian schools access to examination texts that was otherwise not possible. Big or small, fun or with purpose, tech and creativity helped find a way and be a positive force.

So, here’s to 2024 where I can discover how to bring more of my life, learning and passion together.