Told you so.

By Gonzalo López Martí – Creative director / LMMiami.com

  • You’ve played the part.
  • We’ve all played it.
  • I hate to admit but I’ve done it myself more than once.
  • Unconsciously.
  • One tends to realize it after the fact.
  • The naysayer.
  • The devil’s advocate always looking for the cat’s fifth leg, to paraphrase a popular saying in Spanish.
  • If you look around the room and you can’t spot him or her, you might be it.
  • Large organizations are littered with these individuals.
  • Smaller orgs are not foreign to the type.
  • They populate legal departments, HR, procurement.
  • In the ad world they tend to gravitate to the account services dept (don’t shoot, I’m just the messenger).
  • The so-called “brand Nazis” in charge of overseeing the corporate id guidelines are notorious naysayers.
  • They’ve convinced themselves that they are protecting us from ourselves.
  • They are the opposite of the Silicon Valley truism -now slightly tabooed- “move fast & break things”.
  • They would’ve never allowed Google to change its logo every single friggin’ day with the aptly named Google doodle.
  • Why do we do it?
  • I mean, why do we play the devil’s advocate?
  • Is it the schadenfreude of uttering the phrase “I told you so”?
  • Sometimes it is just jealousy.
  • A tantrum.
  • In some cases, the naysayer believes he/she is writing themselves an insurance policy to cover his/her rear end in case things don’t go as planned.
  • A prenup of sorts.
  • Sometimes it is just a way to try and stand out, to command the room.
  • More often than not it is an inability to understand leadership.
  • Great leaders -Ronald Reagan, Winston Churchill, Lee Clow- are not obsessive micromanagers.
  • They inspire the troops and get out of the way.
  • Not for lack of ego or desire for prominence, mind you.
  • It is pragmatism.
  • Great leaders are quickest to cut the ribbon, smile for the cameras and lead the victory lap.
  • Great leaders are masters of the art of stealing the limelight from other people’s accomplishments.
  • I’ve learned from experience that the best creative directors are those who get out of the way and then just “take the credit”, so to speak.
  • Sure, robbing other people of their medals creates lots of chagrin in the workplace too but we’ll leave it for a future column.
  • Anyhoo.
  • Next time you walk into a meeting, try and repeat the old Hollywood mantra -George Clooney’s favorite line, BTW-: “nobody knows anything”*.
  • The bitter awareness that a studio can line up the best screenwriter, the best director and the best cast and the movie can still be a flop.
  • Hopefully, this will help you avoid being the naysayer.

*The line was allegedly coined by legendary Hollywood screenwriter William Goldman.

 

 

Skip to content