"Hierarchy kills creativity"

Advertisingweek.ch: Wolfgang Bark, you are a member of the newly launched Empowerment Board. In October, Jung von Matt presented the Excellence Board - what exactly is the idea behind these boards, what are their tasks?

Wolfgang Bark: Both the Empowerment and Excellence Boards are part of Jung von Matt's new creative ecosystem. The bottom line is that both boards care about moving the agency forward. The Excellence Board with Annette Häcki, Luitgard Hagl, Carsten Jamrow and Stefan Naef is responsible for developing the overall work of the interdisciplinary teams, i.e. the creative output. They are sparring partners for the teams, providing input on specific projects and in joint collaboration. The Empowerment Board, in turn, focuses on each employee individually and is responsible for personal development. The goal of the Empowerment Board is to work with employees to find out how they can best develop and contribute individually and within the construct of a team. In short, we disentangle leadership tasks from daily creative work, because we believe that hierarchy kills creativity.

Who is a member of the Empowerment Board besides you?

These are Vera Riemeier, Annika Seidel, Manuela Brunner, Nathalie Eggen and René Schwarz. Just like our teams, we have an interdisciplinary structure and provide interdisciplinary coaching. We want to avoid silo thinking here as well.

How should one imagine the work of the Empowerment Board?

Our central tool is face-to-face meetings. We talk to our employees on a weekly basis and check with them where they stand, what their next steps are, and where things might be going wrong. It's also about working with them to identify opportunities for further development in the agency and addressing them proactively. That's also new: In the past, you had to work your way up to a certain level in the hierarchy before you could take on more responsibility in a project, for example. In the creative ecosystem, a person's rank is less important and, in some cases, irrelevant. If a junior is super suited for a project and would like to take on more responsibility, we promote that specifically.

Of course, this also involves a certain risk...

Of course. But that's where a positive error culture comes into play. If you want to give young talents responsibility at an early stage, you have to expect that something will go wrong. Quite apart from the fact that this can just as easily happen to very experienced professionals. Under no circumstances should there be a fear of responsibility and of making mistakes. It's better to make the mistakes early and learn from them than to carry them with you all the time. Certainly, a natural respect is good and right. But not taking responsibility or assigning responsibility in the first place out of fear of making mistakes is much worse.

You say rank is less relevant. But there must still be opportunities for development? How do you motivate your employees if there is no longer a classic career ladder?

Development opportunities are central. The only question is: in which direction? Traditionally, development has always meant taking on personnel responsibility at some point. In other words, becoming a boss and managing people. In the process, many specialists realize far too late that they are not at all suited to leading employees, because they prefer to focus on output. Then the people who should be led often fall by the wayside, and that causes frustration. In the creative ecosystem, we therefore distinguish between a more technically oriented career and a leadership career. So you don't necessarily have to lead people anymore to be considered "very experienced" and "senior" in your field. At the same time, people with a talent for leadership can also try out their skills in this area at an early stage and, for example, coach a trainee as a junior. Another advantage is that employees are developed more gradually; the risk of someone being overwhelmed by a sudden increase in responsibility becomes much smaller. The paths have thus become more fluid and diverse. There is no longer a career ladder, but rather a career tree with many branches. And: we also support the development of employees with our internal training program, the School of Excellence.

That all sounds very idealistic. Does that mean that in the future, as an employee, I can only do the things that give me maximum pleasure?

Developing and promoting someone according to their abilities and talents does not automatically mean that you only pick the raisins out of the cake. Every job has aspects in which you are still inexperienced or which do not suit you. That's where empowerment comes in: face even the most uncomfortable challenge, bring out the best, even if not perfect, and learn something about yourself and others. It's important to remember: Empowerment is certainly not about just having feel-good conversations. It can and must hurt at times to look and notice what you're not yet good at or where you have difficulties. Making people aware of their weaknesses is also part of coaching. But the advantage is that you know at the same time that you are embedded in a system in which you are allowed to face your weaknesses, hurdles and deficits in order to overcome them.

Is this empowerment also embedded in a system? 

Yes. On the one hand, we work with a target system in which targets are set and reviewed on a quarterly basis. On the other hand, we are introducing a 360-degree feedback system in which all employees, regardless of their level, are evaluated by their peers and, in turn, evaluate their peers. These feedbacks are conducted on an ongoing basis and are discussed accordingly on an ongoing basis. And they are not anonymous: everyone knows who they have just received feedback from. That's certainly not always easy, but we believe that this is the only way we can move forward individually and together as an agency.

Aren't you afraid that the empowerment board and the belief that less hierarchy is needed will also fuel false expectations?

The creative ecosystem is a fundamental mindset: more opportunities for everyone. Everyone can and may develop in a direction that suits him or her. However, what that direction looks like and the time frame in which it takes place depends on the individual and the circumstances. The core of our work is our people and how they fill the agency with life. I'd rather work with 140 inspired and empowered individuals who have a vision for themselves than with 140 people who are working by the book every day. It's also a fact that turnover in agencies is still high. One of the most frequently cited reasons is because people have the impression that they have not been able to develop personally. And we deliberately want to counteract that.