Rock and Restore.

NOTE: This piece is part of an ongoing newsletter series about a bold new position I'm piloting at Eleven , an advertising agency headquartered in San Francisco. The "Creative Entrepreneur in Residence" is a role that focuses on inclusion, belonging and corporate social responsibility. You can read the job description itself and subscribe to the newsletter here .

During the six months I’ve been serving as Creative Entrepreneur in Residence at Eleven, three senior roles have sat unoccupied: Executive Creative Director, Chief Strategy Officer and Head of Production.

Unoccupied, but not unprioritized. Rather than rush to fill these roles, Eleven did what few companies have the courage to do. They slowed W-A-Y down and took the time to cast a vision of a healthy creative culture of belonging. What kind of leaders would be able to embrace this vision and build on it? What needed to be jettisoned to allow it take root? Where did HR need to search to sidestep the usual suspects?

This introspection was not new. It capped off years of painful honesty about the agency’s shortcomings and commitment to change things. A decade of supporting The 3% Movement , going on two years of partnering with The Mosaic Collaborative to up the cultural competency of all team members, years of Eleven’s CEO teaching a class at Berkeley’s Haas School of Business about Purpose (and likely learning as much from the students as they have from him), and many other steady-drip ways of holding themselves accountable.

So when the headline above ran in Adweek, it wasn’t a diversity story. It was a deserving story. And it wasn’t a short story, it was a novel in many parts. Eleven made itself worthy of these brilliant leaders, each bringing her own gifts and visions of what’s possible in a post-Pandemic, everything’s-up-for-grabs world.

I had the good fortune to fly to LA last week to meet Kristina and Juliette in person, after a couple of months of getting to know them via Zoom. Andrea, based out of Eleven’s NY office, just settled there after a move from London, and I can’t wait to meet her next month when I’ll be in Manhattan.

All I can say is that when I hear any of this trio speak, they just sound so… different. You can get so used to one way of doing business that when someone deviates from the script it’s like the air pressure changes around you. In a good way.

And while this may be music to my ears – a realization of so many values I’ve championed for more inclusive cultures – it’s inevitable that it will fall flat with others.

KJ and Juliette shared a comprehensive vision for the agency with the entire team. Built on legacy treasures but leap-frogging into new mindsets of empathy, kindred clients, multi time-zones, purpose and wellness, this was a roadmap that sounded “too good to be true.”

I understand the skepticism. The advertising industry prizes burnout, sharp elbows, and constant availability (“if you don’t come in on Saturday, don’t bother coming in on Sunday” is one agency’s mantra.)

All joking aside, why do we worship overwork? Is the work really better? Clients really happier? The hamster wheel is hard to exit, but only once you do can you see how inhumane and untenable it all is.

Rock and Restore

As the antidote to this frenzy, KJ (as Kristina is known) is a living embodiment of her mantra, Rock and Restore. She works hard and then refills her cup so she can work hard again. Even the pace at which she speaks seems hypnotic and spacious which, I believe makes people listen more closely and be more fully present.

Rejection of hustle culture doesn’t mean we can’t (or won’t) work fast, execute and deliver. It means we are fiercely protective of our health and mental wellness so that we can show up with excellence. And so we can experience the joy of creation instead of being treated like always-on Pez Dispensers of Ideas.

And here’s the bonus: it’s good for clients, too. As Liz Gilbert says “there’s no such thing as one-way liberation.” This churn-and-burn culture traps clients in a malaise of scarcity, exhaustion and pointlessness.

I share this news to plant the seed of what your leadership could look and sound like. And to report how much more widely I see my own face smiling back to me on Zoom lately. It’s been a long road to get here which makes it even sweeter. As my friend Nathalie Molina Ni?o says: “Little by little, then all of a sudden.”

To be continued…

Until next time, remember that culture is the new creativity.