I See Something Special In You E-Book

Timo Kiuru

• Herausgeber: Word Audio Publishing
• Kategorie: Fachliteratur
• Sprache: Englisch
• Veröffentlichungsjahr: 2022

Beschreibung

What drives creativity in the world’s most innovative companies such as Google, Nike, Apple and Microsoft? How is creativity and talent harnessed to lead these global businesses? Timo Kiuru, an internationally recognized creative director and public speaker, ventured on a mission to discover the answers to these questions. Timo reached out to numerous innovation experts with decades of experience in leading creative teams and companies, and asked them to share their stories. He captured their valuable insights and advice for this book. What turned out to be the common thread in all the conversations was their ability to see that something special in a person. It became clear that the essence of leadership is in the skill to nurture people’s individual growth. This book is about more than business: it’s about the experiences that make us who we are, the challenges that bring out the best in us. It helps us to see the connections between raw talent, creativity and business leadership. Because that’s how we turn potential into superpower. Timo Kiuru is a global creative director on a mission to change how creativity is seen in business. He travels the world to speak to professional audiences about innovation, leadership and change and writes books about creativity. Timo was recognized with the global 40 Under 40 industry award in Texas in 2016 and Speaker of the Year honorary award in 2019 in Helsinki. With this book, he wants to inspire people to seek more specialness everywhere. Don’t dance like no one is watching – dance how you want to, even if everyone is watching. Audiobook and e-book: © Laine Publishing & Word Audio Publishing

Leseprobe

I SEE SOMETHING SPECIAL IN YOU

How Creative Leaders Turn Potential Into Superpower

Timo Kiuru

LAINE PUBLISHING

Copyright © Timo Kiuru and Laine Publishing Oy, 2022

This edition: © Laine Publishing Oy / Word Audio Publishing International / Gyldendal A/S, Copenhagen 2022

Layout: Tuomo Parikka

ISBN 978-91-8054-131-2

www.iseesomethingspecialinyou.com

www.lainepublishing.com

www.timokiuru.com

Word Audio Publishing International/Gyldendal A/S | Klareboderne 3 | DK-1115 Copenhagen K

www.gyldendal.dk

www.wordaudio.se

Preface

ISPENTMYCHILDHOODin the Nordic wilderness, in a small town called Nurmijärvi. My dad had built our house in the middle of a forest in southern Finland. There weren’t many children to play with in the backwoods, so I used to wander in the forest, listening to the sounds of silence. Even though where we lived was less than an hour’s drive from the capital city, Helsinki, city life was as distant for me as it was for every child in a small Finnish town.

My grandmother Hilkka lived right next door to us. She always had time for me. Hilkka had had a heavy life but kept a light spirit. She evacuated from Karelia – a province Finland was forced to cede to the Soviet Union – and moved across the new border during the second World War. After the war, my grandparents had to start all over again.

Having been through the war, Hilkka still had an optimistic attitude. If things didn’t go as planned, she would just make a light-hearted quip rather than lose her temper. I was the youngest of her grandchildren, and that’s why she used to call me “the boy”. On one occasion, our whole extended family was gathered to celebrate her birthday, and she gave us all a round of hugs. After hugging me, she remarked, “A hug from the boy was the best of my gifts.” Everyone laughed, but we both knew she meant it.

I believe we can all name a few people who have made an indelible mark on us and shaped how we turned out. These people might have been with us through our whole lives or just for a short period. It was decades until I realized how much of an effect my grandma Hilkka had had on me. She always made me feel important and seen.

This is a book about being special. The title, I See Something Special in You, is how all stories begin. Love is a result of seeing so much specialness in someone that you’re willing to accept their flaws. Friendship is a result of thinking someone is so special that you’re willing to go out of your way to maintain your relationship.

INAPRIL 2020, IWASWORKINGon an online speech. The pandemic was ravaging the world, the fear was palpable, and everything had to turn virtual. My speech included this sentence: “If we want to learn to lead creativity better, we should listen more to people who have real experience in leading creative teams.”

The thought lingered in my head. Seeing it written down made it even more concrete. Even traditional institutions such as the World Economic Forum had begun to declare the importance of creativity in the future of work. I had traveled around the world, speaking at various professional events, but it seemed to me that the ones talking about creativity were not the people who had decades’ worth of experience in leading creative teams and businesses. I decided to do something about this.

I met the publisher Jonna Hietala in a Helsinki café in August 2020. I had nothing to show her, not a single word except the title of the book. Nevertheless, she told me right away she wanted to publish my book. She cared so much about it that she was willing to take a risk.

That’s the essence of creative work. This book, like any other, also began as an empty Word file with a blinking cursor in the upper corner of a blank page. Creative work is about listening to your instincts, and this book, too, was born out of intuition.

THROUGHOUTMYCAREERI have circled the globe, immersing myself in creativity and creative leadership. For this book, I wanted to find out how the leaders of the most creative organizations in the world do their job. I contacted people I had a lot of respect for and was very thankful for their time. I talked with dozens of people and conducted dozens of interviews. It was hard to narrow them down, but this book includes the fascinating stories of 15 of those inspirational people – stories that dig into your very soul.

We never forget the people who see something special in us and guide us onto a path of growth. That’s why leadership should, above all else, be seen as an effort to make human potential visible.

Companies have endlessly optimized their production chains in the post-industrial society, and people have become part of the machinery. This is reflected in the way businesses are run – people are called human resources. But in knowledge-based work, you will not gain a competitive edge by making people feel like cogs in the machine. It is vital for companies to delve deeper and deeper into understanding human behavior – while also respecting other forms of life on our planet. We all leave our marks on future generations, as my grandmother did on me.

My goal was to write a book that would be based on real life and be a helpful tool for tackling our changing society and working life. Gathered on these pages is wisdom that has accumulated over decades, told in the voices of experienced people in creative business leadership. Their insights can teach us so much for the future of creativity in our workplaces.

I hope that the book will encourage readers to be braver in their search for that something special.

Timo Kiuru

Adrian Nyman

“I Couldn’t See That I Was Special”

Adrian Nyman led Nike’s global retail business, both on- and off-line, for more than a decade as Vice President and Creative Director for Nike’s Sportswear division.

Adrian took Nike, a 40-billion-dollar company, through a global digital transformation, relentlessly re-invented retail, and guided the company into a sustainable future. Currently, Adrian is on a mission to drive the world’s transition to sustainable energy as he works in the UK as Chief of Brand at the global electric vehicle company Arrival.

Adrian collects sneakers, design, art, and vinyl records. He relaxes by building things and loves pairing the perfect with the imperfect in order to make something more complete.

MYPARENTSGOTdivorced when I was really young, and my mother remarried, to a Methodist minister. Ministers have something in common with army officers – just like military families, our family moved around a tremendous amount.

In 1977, when I was four years old, it was time to pack our bags, leave the sunny Bay Area in California and move to a small town in Oklahoma, a rural state in the middle of America. The town had about 200 inhabitants. There was the main street, one store and one intersection. Lots of cowboys, lots of farming. And us.

I literally grew up in the middle of nowhere.

We ended up moving from one Oklahoman town to another every two years, and I was always the new kid in the school. I was never able to establish long-term friendships because whenever I slowly found some people that I could relate to, I had to pack my bags and move again.

Every time you come to a new school, you have to figure out how to fit in. That doesn’t mean just making friends – the first thing you need to figure out is how to not get beat up. There was a lot of social and emotional gymnastics the new kid needed to do. I had been very shy and introverted, but it made me come out of my shell and challenge myself.

I really struggled in school. Everything got scrambled around reading and writing. I didn’t know why I couldn’t read like the other kids in the class, and I always worried that the teacher would call on me and ask me to read a passage. It was like a dark cloud over me. I felt like I wasn’t as good as other people.

My mom worked as a nurse, so I didn’t grow up with a lot of money. She was also a craftswoman – she could draw, take ideas, and turn them into things – but no one in my family thought of doing something creative as a profession. I didn’t know there were such things as creative directors, art directors or graphic designers. I just thought that if you’re an artist then you sell paintings, like Picasso or Andy Warhol.

My mom was very progressive and liberal, and after ten years in Oklahoma she felt like she had had enough of these conservative small towns. So we moved back to California when I was in my early teens.

IWASJUSTLIKEevery kid at that age. I started to form my own sense of identity, feel independent and do things without asking my parents. I discovered hardcore punk rock music and skateboarding, which were really popping at that time. Through these two avenues, I felt a connection to a group of people – for the very first time.

The skateboarders and punk rockers didn’t play a sport where you have to hear the rules or keep score. There were no social norms and constraints, no right way to do anything. In punk rock, you could write a song that was 30 seconds long or 10 minutes long, and you might not even know how to play an instrument. It was all DIY, make it up as you go, no judgement.

For me, it felt like a giant exhale. It was the antidote to all the pressure I felt in normal life to do things I couldn’t do.

All of a sudden I was seen, I was understood. It was like watering a plant, and I just grew exponentially. I applied all my energy to that culture. I started bands, did skateboard graphics and T-shirt designs – I even told my mom what kind of pants I wanted and asked her to sew them for me. Then punk rock morphed into hip-hop, hip-hop morphed into house music and rave culture in the early 90s, but the sentiment of all those groups was the same: a tribe of people who took you as you were.

ISTILLREMEMBER walking into a skate shop for the first time. I saw all these graphics for Bones Brigade, a team of skateboarders riding under the Powell Peralta brand, and went:

“Holy shit, somebody did this!”

It was life-changing. I realized that you didn’t need to be an artist to do something creative and make a living out of it.

I wanted to get into it, but I didn’t have a computer. So I thought: Kinko’s!

Kinko’s was a copy center. Inside, they had a public area: worktables with slide rulers, basically all the mechanical tools a graphic designer would have used in the seventies. I drew logos and then I cut the elements out. I went to the copy center and did physical layouts and recollaged them. That’s exactly how I did my first logo for a skate shop in a town I lived in.

After my grandmother passed away, she left me a little bit of money. I felt responsible to spend it in a reasonable way, so I bought a Power Mac. I got bootleg Photoshop and Illustrator and learned how to use them.

In my mid-teens, I was diagnosed as being dyslexic. Looking back, I understand that my inability to communicate and participate through traditional education made me creative. Dyslexia rewired my brain to be more of a visual storyteller. I could articulate ideas in ways that other people couldn’t, because I had to overcompensate. That created a superpower in me.

But at the time I couldn’t see that for myself. I couldn’t see that I was special. I just felt I was trying to hack the system everywhere I went.

THEFIRSTTIMEI made a cut-and-sew pant, I literally just walked into this factory in San Francisco. I wandered around until I found the production manager and I told her confidently:

“I want to get some samples made, I got fabric and I got a pattern.”

She must have been thinking “What is this kid doing here?” but she was friendly and told me how much it would cost. When I was about to leave, she asked me:

“Where are all the zippers, buttons and your trim?”

I replied to her: “I thought you’d put them on.”

She was like: “No, you have to get them.”

She took a piece of paper and wrote down an address. She gave me all the sizes I needed and told me to head to the store.

Every time you make a garment, certain parts of the garment need to grow or shrink – like for an XL, the sleeves need to be bigger. It’s called grading. For the first pant that I made, I didn’t grade the in-seams. So it came out with a super big waist and short pants. It was a no-no in the nineties. I made like 300 pairs, and no one bought any of them.

I was young and dumb. I made a lot of rookie mistakes, but I didn’t care. Not knowing how to do anything, I just did it without overthinking. I wasn’t overly confident and didn’t do it because I wanted to show everyone how cool I was, I just had a desire inside of me to make stuff. I wanted to make my own version of everything I saw that inspired me – I felt like I had found a whole new universe.

Many knowledgeable people, like the lady in the factory, laughed at me, but in a nice way, and also helped me. That’s kind of the story of my career. Passion trumps not knowing. If you care, you’re earnest, you really want to do something and you’re honest about trying to figure something out, people will help you. If you’re arrogant or think you have it all figured out, you probably won’t get the same level of help from strangers.

THESAVINGGRACEwas that a lot of my close friends were becoming quite famous in the skateboarding world. They were amateurs turning into professionals. They were featured in videos and getting into covers of Thrasher and TransWorld magazines. They were putting my sticker on their boards; they were wearing my T-shirts. My products sucked, but they were promoting the brand, and it was becoming very visible.

The fact that I was authentic and I was really doing it made people accept me. And when you have a vibe and the right people are hanging around with you, then other people want to be part of it too.

I ended up licensing with a larger manufacturer that was working with established brands. They had distribution, warehousing and manufacturing capabilities overseas. They knew how to import and they had some capital. They were like:

“You’re doing this cool thing and getting some notoriety in the skateboarding world, why don’t you join us, and we’ll fund your brand?”

It never got to be huge, but it allowed me to go all over the world to get production done with my designs. I learned how to make a good catalog and how to make a good pant. It was really exciting.

HONESTLY, THEREASONwhy I started my own company was because I felt like I wasn’t good enough. I felt like I couldn’t work in a big company, since I didn’t go to university and have a fancy degree. It definitely wasn’t anything strategic, nothing has ever been. I just followed my intuition.

At some point, I realized that I could be more successful and support myself better if I worked for other people. I still had my side projects, but my focus went into designing other brands’ collections. So all of a sudden I had my own design studio. Brands I worked with slowly turned from skateboard brands into non-skateboard brands like Levi’s and Disney.

When I wanted to do something, I just decided to make it happen.

I remember when I did a big project for Levi’s. I connected with Damien Hirst, who at the time was one the most known artists in the world. We had a really good connection and became friends. We had just done a big fashion show during New York Fashion Week with his gallery in Manhattan. The show got a ton of press, and I was thinking about self-publishing a big coffee-table book that told the story of the collection.

Back then, Vincent Gallo was an idol of mine. Buffalo 66 was a movie that he wrote, directed and scored, and it blew my mind. He was so bad-ass, a renaissance man. I thought, who do I want to be in the book? Fucking Vincent Gallo!

In the same spirit of going to Kinko’s to make a logo or going to a factory in San Francisco to make a pant, I just asked friends in LA if anyone had Vincent Gallo’s phone number. In a very roundabout way, I got a random number.

I straight cold-called him. He didn’t pick up, so I left a message. I didn’t hear anything from him for a long time, but finally he called me:

“This is Vincent.”

No small talk, he was very direct.

“What are you doing, man?” he asked me aggressively.

I was a little shocked and replied:

“I’m doing this book and I’d be so stoked if you could be part of it.”

I offered him $5,000. I had no idea how small amount of money that was.

“No, man. No! I’m not doing that!” he replied and sounded pissed off.

I ended up paying him more, but he did it for very cheap in the context of what he gets paid.

On the day of the photoshoot, I didn’t know if he would show up. He did and we ended up making it happen. It was just me, my friend Bo and a stylist who was helping us out. When Vincent saw how we built everything together and how hands-on I was, his guard came down and he became a fan of the project. He noticed that I was doing my thing and he accepted me – just like the skate community in my teens.

SOMEONEATNIKEmust have got a copy of the book. They were thinking, this is something Nike would do.

Next, something unexpected happened. A high-level executive at Nike reached out to me one day. His name was Roger. He asked me in an English accent:

“Adrian, what are you doing?”

I was a little confused.

Then he paused and said:

“Why don’t you come and work at Nike? I think it’s really your next step.”

I was thinking out loud:

“Why would I want to close down my successful design studio? I’m making good money. I’m loving the scope of the work and the projects. Why would I want to take a job at a big corporation which is probably pretty complicated and not that enjoyable?”

His next words resonated in my heart:

“You’re never going to reach your full potential if you stay in your own space,” he stated calmly.

I realized I was limiting myself by dictating my own success. I was doing successful things, but I wasn’t really challenging myself.

Roger was determined and continued:

“If you come to Nike, you’re going to work with the world’s best people and on the world’s biggest projects.”

Then, he said something that I wasn’t able to unhear, no matter how much I tried:

“If you come to work at Nike, you’re going to work with people who ask something of you that you won’t ask of yourself.”

I had to make a very intimidating decision: do I want to step out of my comfort zone and step on a stage where expectations are a million times higher? Would I go into a company where I felt everyone was better than me?

It took about six months. Roger would check in with me every couple of weeks, and months passed by. He didn’t give up, and eventually, I had to look him in the eye and say:

“Roger, you’re right. I’m going to listen to you because you see something in me that I don’t see in myself. I trust you.”

It was an unknown territory, it felt dangerous. The bright light was shone on me – something that was my nightmare as a kid.