Q. Were you in leadership roles early on?
A. My first job managing people was when I was 16, and I was given the keys to Carvel Store No. 1587 in Stratford, Conn. I was managing people who would come back on college break to work at the ice cream shop. They were older than me, and that was tricky. I learned a lot.
But I’ve always been a guy with a lot of opinions. And with opinions often comes conviction, and you see a better way to do things. So you become vocal and you get comfortable standing up in front of people or talking to people or swaying a room to move in a certain direction.
I should point out that I’m one of seven children, and it was a zoo at my house and therefore you had to work to be heard. Not only did you have to be crafty, smart and loud, but you also had to be on your toes to convince other people to do what you wanted, especially since I was on the younger end. Learning to navigate in that household, I developed some communication skills.
Q. I’ve been struck by the number of C.E.O.’s I’ve interviewed who come from large families.
A. I’m sixth out of seven, so I had five other teachers in the house. I learned certain things from my parents, but each kid had different interests, different styles, and I would learn and almost pick and choose from them — “That looks effective,” or “That’s smart.”
Q. How did you break into the industry?
A. I went to Madison Avenue to get a job, any job, in advertising. So I pounded the pavement, and at the time, you had to take typing tests at all the big agencies. I failed them all. Then I took a job at a small agency. They didn’t require typing tests, and the job I took was as the receptionist. Talk about learning people skills. You interact with absolutely everybody in the building — all the clients, all the people, all the vendors. I picked people’s brains about what they did and how they thought, and it was just a really helpful starting point.
The weird thing is right from that first job, I knew that someday I wanted my own agency. Every job I had after that, I gleaned the information I wanted, thinking: “I’m going to do that. I’m not going to do that.”
Q. Give me an example.
A. A big part of the job is motivating creative people with varied backgrounds and interests. What generally doesn’t work, or only works for a short time, is the fear-based motivation, the overt competition. Competition is healthy at some level, but when it’s presented as “Two parties are going to dance and we’re going to pick who wins,” I believe creativity is suffocated. You may get results once or twice because you lit a fire and people performed. But as an ongoing way to cultivate creativity, I think you have to make people feel like you believe in them. It’s as simple as that.
Q. What else about your culture?
A. We give out a lot of awards. We give a spousal award to the spouse or significant other who we think has put up with us monopolizing an employee’s time or sending them on a lot of travel. We’ll give them something like a weekend away and massages up in the wine country.
We also have an award where we literally give a golden commode — we call it the golden toilet award — to somebody in the trenches who is making things happen and is calm under pressure and takes care of things with dignity.
We also have an old-timers award. We’re coming up on 12 years now, but when we were six years old, we realized we had some people who had been here for five years. That’s pretty good, especially in advertising, where time is a bit like dog years. So we came up with the idea to give people this big glass beer stein boot with the five-year old-timer award emblazoned on it. It comes with a thousand-dollar bar tab at a pub around the corner, and they can spend it however they want. We suspected this would happen, but they often invite the newbies out and so you get this mixing of generations. There’s a great cross-pollination of people and values and ideas. I think we’re up to 38 old-timers by now.
Q. How has your leadership style evolved?
A. I was so focused on starting a company that I was maniacal about every little thing we did. In the last five years, I really focused on the fact that the secret to this thing is the culture. If I get the culture right, it will attract the right people, and they’re going to do the right kind of work.
The culture is not all foosball and Pizza Fridays. We have both and we enjoy both. But culture is about people knowing you’re there to support them, not looking over their shoulder waiting for them to fail, and that you’re there to help when they hit tough times. They can be very honest, come into your office and sit down and say, “I screwed up — help me out,” as opposed to trying to hide it.
I also want to make sure that managers know that their job is to get the people who work for them to be asking to work for them. So they can’t do that old trick of managing up to me and the partners, and being a complete jackal to the people below. They know I’m asking people constantly: “Hey, are they giving you timely feedback? Are they helpful? Are they courteous? Do they have basic human decency?” These things are important.
Q. What career advice would you give to new college grads?
A. The advertising-specific one is ask for the headaches. Find something your boss is doing that he hates doing — it’s difficult, painful, time-consuming — and say, “I’ll take that,” and make it great. Too many people ask for the choice assignments. Do the dishes really well and you’ll be a very valuable person.
The broader advice is that the only things you can control in your life are your attitude and your effort. You can’t control all the craziness of the people around you, the circumstances, the situations, the failures and successes. Give it your all and have a positive attitude. It goes a long way in the world. That’s underappreciated, I think.
This interview has been edited and condensed.
Article source: http://www.nytimes.com/2013/06/30/business/paul-venables-on-asking-for-the-toughest-jobs.html?partner=rss&emc=rss
