Leading In The Time Of Virus
"FEARLESS CREATIVE LEADERSHIP" PODCAST - TRANSCRIPT
Episode 219: Justin Gignac
Hi. I’m Charles Day. I work with creative and innovative companies. I coach and advise their leaders to help them maximize their impact and their business.
This episode is part of season 2 - which we’ve sub-titled, “Leading In The Time of Virus”.
Today, leadership means meeting the challenges of two viruses - COVID-19 and racism.
In this environment, unlocking creative thinking has never been more valuable or essential.
Justin Gignac is the co-founder of Working Not Working. They describe themselves as a curated community of 80,000 of the best creatives in the world.
Most businesses today are led and staffed by predominantly white people. Very, very few companies reflect society.
Leaders are suddenly galvanized to fix this problem, publishing staffing numbers and pledging to hire diverse talent.
I believe them when they say it. I believe them when they say they’re going to work to create environments that support and embrace the emotional and cultural safety of every person.
But the question that too few leaders are addressing is where will we find these people?
The talent supply chain has been designed to produce white candidates in disproportionately large numbers.
If you are really going to fix this problem, you’re going to have look for talent in different places, define a successful candidate in different terms and hire in different ways.
Are you ready for that? And where will you start?
Here’s Justin Gignac.
Charles: (01:41)
Justin, welcome back to Fearless. Thanks for coming back on the show.
Justin Gignac: (01:44)
Thank you. My pleasure. I got to tell you, I do a lot of interviewing and I've been interviewed quite a few times and the conversation that we had the last time I was on the show is probably one of my favorite that I've had. And you're probably the most thoughtful interviewer that I've experienced. So a pleasure to come back on.
Charles: (02:04)
Well, that's very kind. Now I'm slightly apprehensive about delivering on that. So let me see how we do about it. It's very kind of you to say, so thank you. Tell us where you are locked down. Where are you quarantined?
Justin Gignac: (02:15)
Quarantined in Williamsburg, Brooklyn with my girlfriend who had just moved in right before all this happened. And so this is definitely the test and we're passing it luckily with flying colors. So we're having a lot of fun and just trying to make the most of each day over here.
Charles: (02:33)
That must've been an amazing experience to suddenly find yourselves put together so closely with little choice but to figure it out.
Justin Gignac: (02:41)
Uh-huh (affirmative). I keep joking that it's like being locked in an escape room you can't escape. But we're actually like 90 days in and we still are really liking each other. So that's a good sign. I feel like this is going to accelerate either relationships flourishing or breaking up. And it's probably going to do everyone a huge favor instead of waiting too long to figure these things out.
Charles: (03:05)
Yeah, I do think that's true, actually. I think that it's accelerating many different elements of society, isn't it? But one of them clearly is whether relationships are built to last or not. I want to talk to you through two lenses. When we first talked about having to come back on the show, the focus was obviously through the lens of the pandemic. The world has changed so quickly that in the time since we've scheduled this, obviously we now have the Black Lives Matter movement and the George Floyd death as a massive social change agents as well. Let's talk first about how your business has dealt with the pandemic. What has been going on in terms of how you've adapted and how you have adjusted to supporting the community through the pandemic?
Justin Gignac: (03:56)
Yeah. And for those who aren't familiar with Working Not Working, we are a curated community of the best creatives in the world. And so the majority of our business is based on companies coming, recruiters coming to the site, paying a monthly or yearly membership fee, and then having access to the 80,000 creatives in our network. And so it's not commission-based, it's more on the membership fee. So when this all went down and we expected people to be canceling their memberships, because we knew the hiring was being put on pause, people were kind of had that, especially the first few weeks or month was like the, "Oh shit, what are we doing? What's going on?" It, luckily didn't happen at the quite as high of a rate as I was expecting. So that's a bit of a relief. And for us, it's really figuring out, all right, if people aren't hiring right now, how else can we solve problems for the industry and for our community?
And that's always been a goal of ours, but it very quickly shifted within a day of like, "All right, well what does the community need now?" And a lot of it was just support and just talking through stuff. And so we took ... The one thing is I'm super proud of my team because they stepped up with immediate urgency to like, "All right, how do we go and help the community?" And so we were doing events almost daily on Zoom for the creatives and the hires in our network. We started doing, we were doing a monthly creative support group that we started about two years ago, called Talking Not Talking where we'd meet in person and sit around a circle and talk about what we're struggling with right now as creative professionals, which has been an amazing experience, probably one of the things I'm proudest of.
We were doing that in New York, LA and San Francisco, but now we've brought it online and we're doing it every other, well initially every week and now we're doing it every other week. So it's trying to just help people through this. And our team was like, "Hey, any creatives, if you want to have a phone call, hit us up, we'll do a 15 minute phone call just to talk through what's going on." We got a few hundred people hitting us up for that. So then the team went and Amanda, from our team, parlayed that into a new service called The United where people can come and either seek kind of a 30 minute conversation with someone, if you have questions or want a portfolio review, and then professionals can also sign up to do these mentorship calls. And so that's been, we launched that a little over a month ago and that's been phenomenal and I've done quite a few of those calls.
And it's really just being there for each other right now and supporting each other, answering questions, having workshops and doing things to educate and inform our community so everyone feels a little more support and certainty when this is completely uncertain.
Charles: (06:30)
What are the biggest problems people are bringing to you?
Justin Gignac: (06:34)
Well, the first one is just no work and not really knowing when it's going to come back. And I think, the majority of our community is freelancers. We're about 70 to 75% of the community is freelance creatives. And so there's a certain level of adaptability you need to be freelance and to kind of weather those highs and lows, where you have a few weeks where you're not getting any calls or months where you're not getting a call. So the people who've been freelancing for a while, have a little bit more of a ability to navigate that.
But then a lot of people were just kind of forced into freelance because they were laid off. And so I think people are just scared and they're worried about how to pay the bills. And they're worried about how to take the skills you use. And I think people were wondering is the thing I'm doing are the things I can do still applicable and are they still going to be in demand? And I think that the thing we tell our community is you really got to sit and think about what skill set do you have and how can you apply it now and how can you help people? Because there was, and even now I hear people have a hesitation of like, "When should I be reaching out work or letting people know?" And I tell people, it's not about like, "Hey, I'm here for hire" it's "Hey, do you need help with anything? And here are all the different ways that I can help. And here are all the ways I'm willing to help."
And I think when we approach it from that, like a more human approach, it's better received and it's also just able to help each other. And you're seeing it with companies and brands, Louis Vuitton making hand sanitizer and people making masks that don't normally do that. And creatives going and creating new branding for places that were typically only brick and mortar, but now have to have an online business. And so it's, we have a lot of skills that are necessary right now, just figuring out new ways of applying them that maybe we hadn't thought of before.
Charles: (08:27)
It's a really interesting element of the human condition isn't it, that there are two sides of the coin, the people who need help and the people who are able to give help. And the struggle I think that the challenge sometimes is for people who are in the middle of that spectrum, essentially. Instinct is I need help. But to your point, in fact, if you are, if you have some level of financial security, if you have your health, if you have physical security, living in a safe place and so on, in many, many ways, the best ways to receive help is in fact to start by thinking about how can I help and turning the paradigm on its head. That's essentially what your network has been able to start providing people support to do it.
Justin Gignac: (09:08)
And yes, exactly that, and it really helps you get out of the anxiety of helplessness because, and we hear it all the time. People are like, "I don't know what to do." And it's like, "Well, maybe you want to have a conversation with someone else who doesn't know what to do when you can give them feedback on their portfolio, because you have a few more years of experience or you are willing to just be honest and open." Like people show up at Talking Not Talking and just talk about what they're going through and you see everyone else nodding in agreement and just going, "Oh, I'm not the only one going through this." So even by sharing your story about what you're struggling with, that in turn is helping other people. So I think there's so many different ways around this where, but figuring out how to help others first, whether it's sharing your story or giving advice or feedback that kind of helps get you out of your own head.
Charles: (09:58)
Yeah. I think that's absolutely right. The, the ability to actually kind of lean into something and to start taking responsibility for trying to move a process forward is incredibly therapeutic. And I personally find that if I'm struggling with something, the way that I get through that is to lean in and say, "I just want to accomplish something. I want a sense of having progress and made movement forward." As your business has met this challenge head on, you said at the beginning that you've got 80,000 members, and you have a very clear definition of what those members represent. Right? You said the most talented, creative people in the world or some expression similar to that. How do you describe it?
Justin Gignac: (10:35)
Yeah, it would carry the network of the best creatives in the universe. And for us, it's like, we want all of the current all-stars of course, but we want all the future all-stars too. So that's where we were putting even more effort into getting students on and recent grads and younger people in their career to help them along that trajectory.
Charles: (10:52)
And how do you see the pandemic changing the structure of the workforce in the longterm as the economy starts to be reformed in some fashion? What are you seeing as the future of your business? What's the role that you're going to play? Will it be different than it was?
Justin Gignac: (11:07)
Yeah. And I think we're going to get into that even more when we start talking about the social issues that are going on right now. But I think for us, we've always known that the future was heading towards freelance. You're going to have your core team of full timers that you can rely on. And then you're going to want the flexibility to bring in supplemental talent. Now going back to the financial crisis, I thought it was going to be the worst thing that ever happened in my freelance career. And instead, after the initial lull, I was busier than ever, and all my friends were busier than ever because a bunch of agencies laid off creatives and they had no one to do the work, no one to pitch new business. And I think there'll be a hesitation in the short term to hiring full time people again, because we don't know if there's going to be a second wave of what's going on, but I think this is going to be a really great time for people that are not in major markets and companies that are not major markets.
There used to be such a strong mindset that I need someone here, which we now all know is not really necessary. And so the talent that is in Toledo or in Austin or in Chicago, I know it's a major city, but if you're in a New York or LA mindset or San Francisco mindset, but anywhere you're going to have access to that talent. So now you're going to have access to higher quality talent, because you're going to be opening up your pool to people all over the world.
And at the same time companies that used to have a hard time recruiting talent to their markets, and I remember talking to recruiters [inaudible] in Portland and said like, "Yeah, we know we have our pick of people, but still, it's not easy convincing people to move to Portland." And so maybe now you don't need to convince people to move to Portland or to Chattanooga or wherever. You can just go and get the great talent no matter where they are. And yeah, you get access to these great companies, no matter where they are too. So I think it's really going to democratize and open things up and hopefully it leads to a bunch more collaborations and new work that never would have been possible before.
Charles: (13:03)
What do you think it done? What do you think it is? What do you think it will do to the future of the office? Not just from a physical standpoint, because obviously you're right, work from home is become a different dynamic. But to your point, companies that have offices in different locations. While there are clearly cultural themes that run through this offices, those offices also have separate identities when people start to work in wherever they wish, essentially virtually, what do you think that's going to do to the culture of different offices within the same company?
Justin Gignac: (13:34)
Honestly, I don't know. I don't know what's going to happen. I think it's going to be, I think the hardest part of all of this is continuing company culture. Like we've even been like our team was like, "Hey, could we do like a happy hour or something with just us because we've been doing all this work." I was like, "Oh yeah," because it's like, especially now, because there's such urgency to solve the problems at hand that you're like, "Oh, we still need to be a team and do things together beyond this." And so I don't really know what that looks like. I mean, it might make the culture's more similar because people are going to be ... Even before all this happened, you heard the holding companies pushing their agencies to be sharing talent, to be sharing resources, all of that.
So the identity of one agency wasn't necessarily going to be staying just them anymore because they're going to be sharing with their other sister agencies. And so it's going to be really interesting to see how fluid it becomes and yeah, it's going to be, I don't really know the answer to the culture thing. I think it's going to be, people are going to have to look at it in a new way. It's going to be your culture used to be based on your kind of daily and weekly events and the stuff you did for your teams and the things you had in your office. How do we rethink that if we're only going to the office for brainstorming sessions or meetings or to collaborate with each other? I don't know what that looks like yet.
Charles: (15:00)
Let's turn our attention to Black Lives Matter as the other massive social disruptive force that I think is going to end up making 2020 the most influential year of any of our lives, those of us who were alive together. So the murder of George Floyd, the sudden and dramatic expansion of Black Lives Matter, the recent murder in Atlanta further amplifying the energy around this. The fact that this has clearly caught on not just as another response to a killing, but in fact feels, I think, structural, seismic, comprehensive. It's affecting businesses. It's affecting industries, there is clearly a different level of intention and determination, not just desire, but determination to make substantive change. How is your business responding to that? And what are you seeing through the lens of the supply chain, right? The talent supply chain, which clearly you are an integral part of it.
Justin Gignac: (15:55)
Yeah. I think first of all, it's about fucking time. Like how many times does this need to happen for people to take this seriously? And yesterday my girlfriend, Ashley and I, and Ashley's a black woman. And we were watching [inaudible] had a thing with the founders of Saturday Morning, which is for African American men. And there's other people part of the organization now, but talking about hiring and being a black creative and the inability to ... The necessity to be perfect, which is the opposite of being a creative, because you have to be able to take risks and fail. All of this is the same conversation they've been having over and over and over again. They started in 2005 or 2006. And talking to some of my friends, I'm like, "This has got to be exhausting."
And the industry has been having conferences about this and shit isn't changing. And for us, it's created a new sense of urgency with us going we haven't been changing fast enough either. We haven't been doing enough to support young black creatives and young creatives of color to come even come into the industry. You know, the pipeline isn't there because it's a thing we talk about internally a lot, being a creative and pursuing a creative career is rarely encouraged in any culture. People want you to go and get a real job and go into finance or accounting, or be a doctor or lawyer. You talk to kids that are immigrants, the different expectations there. People don't know this as a career. And so if most people don't know, especially people of color don't know that this is an opportunity to take the thing that you are so uniquely passionate about, about green being a creative person, that you could take that and make a very substantial living doing that is just not known.
And we need to go and let kids know at a younger, younger age, elementary schools and high schools that they can pursue this. So there's a lot that needs to be done there. And there are great organizations doing that. I know the 4A's have some great programs. The One Club has some great programs, but we are feeling like "Shit, we need to do way more." And immediately our team. And I was out on vacation and just checking in a little bit. But like in one day they came back with a 10 page doc of ideas of the things we need to be doing. And I think it's a really important time as a leader in a company. And we're a small team. We're only 10 people, but we aren't as diverse as we would like to be. And we were about to make six more hires and then COVID happens.
So, but the biggest thing I'm learning now as co founder of this company is to listen to my people and, and I'm encouraging them. And it's in the past couple weeks, it's like, they need to have more of a voice. And I want to hear what they think more and there's a lot of ... You kind of got to get over yourself and the regret of not doing things sooner, the guilt of not doing things sooner, because that just gets in the way of actually doing something substantial and having progress. So I want to hear what my team thinks because they have a lot of opinions and they have such different perspectives than I do. And it's like, "All right, what is important to you? Okay, let's go do that." And then we need to do even more than that.
So, and it's a hard time now. I hear from and see posts from black creatives that are just being inundated right now because everyone's going, "Oh shit. Now we got to check the box," which is like, "No, you don't have to check the box. You have to invest in diversity and invest in the future." And I thought [inaudible] Jenkins yesterday said a great thing. He's like, "It's not an experiment. It's an investment." And point of being in a creative culture is you want different viewpoints and you want to stretch your ideas. I don't need someone else that comes up with ideas the same way that I do or has the same experience that I do. And so it just fucking sucks that it's taken this long for people to figure it out and it's taken something so dramatic and not just one dramatic, it's like thousands of times over and over again.
And finally people are going, "Oh, this is a real thing." And so I can't even understand the frustration that black creatives and just people of color in this country must feel that like, yeah, how many people have to die until you actually give us equal opportunity in a fucking ad agency. And it's just like, there's a lot of reckoning that's going to happen. There's a lot of change that needs to happen and people need to take this seriously. And I think they are finally, but it's also got to make sure you're not doing it ... because it's fine to go and make all this effort to hire black creatives and black people within your agencies. But if you don't create an environment that actually welcomes them and they feel safe and they can thrive and feel welcome, then it's just like, "Oh, this is, we had to hire someone."
It just, it's not going to work. And so there's a lot of education that needs to happen to be able to create these environments where it actually is inclusive and it's equitable, and voices can be heard because a lot of times people don't feel okay speaking out when it doesn't feel right. And so we need to change our systems and change how this is working so people feel comfortable and safe enough to be able to speak out. So to say, "Hey, I appreciate that I'm here, but this isn't working, this isn't working, this isn't working" and not get defensive. And I think that's a hard thing because I think going back to the guilt and shame and all that, it's really easy to get defensive. And you just got to get over yourself and get rid of the ego and go, "All right, how can I do better?"
Charles: (21:24)
To my way of thinking there are two major structural problems that have to get addressed. You've mentioned both of them. One of them is the environment that is created within a company. How do you create an environment that is not just a welcoming of people, of all races and ethnicities, but actually creates an environment in which they can fully express themselves and feel supported to express themselves. The second part is the supply chain. How do you fix the supply chain that is clearly institutionally biased towards white people in the creative talent arena, right?
The evidence is clear. There is decades of evidence to prove the point. How do we reach into this? How do we fix the supply chain proactively while still dealing with the expectation of the industry that says talent has to be the frame of reference that we use to judge who is eligible for this? Those two things at the moment are at odds with each other, right? Because we don't give creatives enough opportunity for people to demonstrate their talent.
Justin Gignac: (22:49)
Well, we need to get creative in how we identify talent. I think there's many amazing, amazing recruiters in house that are able to find a nugget of talent in someone by one thing that they've done and say, there's something there that we can nurture and grow, but traditionally the pipeline is, are, did you go to a portfolio school? Did you go to this school or that school or that school? Do you have a book that has these things in it? And they're just the hoops that need to be jumped through to say, "Oh, this is a quality creative person that I'm willing to invest in" is not realistic. And so there are amazing creative kids and young people of color doing amazingly creative shit on Tik Tok and on their YouTube channels and on Instagram and on their blogs and everywhere else.
And you just need to find that and find that spark and start looking at their places and start coming up with different ways that you measure creative talent and how do you go and tap into it. But you have to be willing to teach and grow talent. And if you just expect people to show up and have it, then that's not realistic, but then you're also missing out on the opportunity to grow your agency in exponential ways, because you just need to be willing to invest in that. And for us as a community that has some of the best creative people in the world, and we need to do more to provide opportunities and education for those younger people. And we have some ideas that we're going to work with, where it's just like, can we go and go to schools with some of the all-stars in our community and have them talk about the things they do and talk, tell how much money they made last year.
If you went and told parents that you made $250,000 last year as an illustrator, they'd be like, "Oh shit, my kid's really good at drawing." That's a realistic job. And the thing is, I had a conversation on my podcast Overshare like a month or two ago with this, she calls herself a mad scientist, Dr. Vivian Ming. And she talked about, she, she works on AI and robotics to replace people. And she's talking about the workforce of the future. And the workforce of the future is going to be people who can do very repetitive, simple tasks that it's too expensive or too difficult to teach machines to do. Like her example was picking strawberries to make a robot pick strawberries it doesn't have the care to pick the strawberry and not squish it. So to spend all this millions and millions of research to build a robot to pick strawberries doesn't make sense.
Then there's going to be a huge gap in the middle. And then the other jobs are going to be the creative jobs. And so we are the workforce of the future. And so we need to go in and let people know ... The educational system right now is failing our kids. They are teaching them stuff they can Google, they are teaching them ... You see the arts program is being canceled. They're not teaching them creativity, creative problem solving the thing like in talking to the Dr. Ming was the thing you need for the future. People are like, Oh, you need to learn to code? No, you don't need to learn to code. You need adaptability, resiliency, and a growth mindset. So we need to provide situations where our talent in our kids can fail to learn how to be resilient and to go and figure out things and solve problems creatively.
And so we're now figuring out how do we invest in making that happen? Who do we partner with to make that happen? So education is going to become a big thing for us and educating people that historically aren't getting access to these jobs is going to be really important for us. So that's completely shifted. And it's something we've always wanted to do, because we know to ensure that we have a greater future, we got to have kids that are thinking creatively. And some of the biggest problems would be like, and you're seeing it like this is in the past three months, you have perfume companies making hand sanitizer, and you have tech companies making face masks, and you have these things. You've seen creativity, even people singing on balconies, all of the stuff that's going on in the world right now, creativity is you're seeing it providing an answer in all these different ways. And we need that thinking. And so how do we ensure that?
Charles: (27:07)
So are you overtly changing your understanding, your own definition of what represents the best creative talent in the world?
Justin Gignac: (27:15)
Yeah. Well, I think we've always been pretty open to what that means. And so, but I think for us, it's finding, getting more people and inviting them in, and this is a very sensitive thing right now, because I don't want to go around, it's what I said earlier, seeing like black creatives just be inundated, I don't want to go in like, "Okay, now we're going to go in and invite 20,000 black creatives," because that just feels at this point right now, it feels disingenuous. I want to focus on us creating an environment where black creatives feel welcome and people of color feel welcome and feel like this is a place where they can go find opportunity and thrive before we even go, "All right. Now we need to email 20,000 people," because it just feels so knee jerk. And we got to make sure that we're creating the environment first, that really sets them up for success and make sure that the pipeline to the agencies and we know people are open to it, but we want to do it softly and do it right.
And then coming up with the right partnerships. So partnering with people like Saturday Morning or partnering with there's an amazing organization called Scope Of Work that has been their, their goal is to get young creatives of color from age, I think 16 to 24 into the advertising industry and the creative industry. So partnering with them and other such organizations that are already doing the work and what can we do to help amplify that and support that instead of us trying to co-opt everything, or us coming in as the hero, because that's not, that's not the goal and that's not what we should be doing right now. So it's really, it is a sensitive time. It's a thoughtful time, it's also really hopeful, because it's about time.
Charles: (28:55)
It's a fine balancing act isn't it, between preparing and doing. I mean, I take your point and I think you're right, the environment has to be supportive, but it's also, I think, easy for many people to have that process take much longer than it should. And as a result of which change doesn't happen fast enough. So I think this is going to be part of the struggle that we are confronting and facing. I mean, I think to your earlier point, thank God we are finally confronting it in a realistic fashion. I think all of us have a responsibility to keep the heat on, to make sure that there is the right balance between preparing and actually acting and doing.
Justin Gignac: (29:32)
Yeah. And it's also inviting people to keep the heat on us. So it's inviting my team to keep the heat on me and Adam, my co founder. And the preparing can't take years. It can't take months. It's like, all right, what are we doing this week to change the platform? What are we doing this week to make it easier for people to be discovered? What are we doing this week to maybe some of the language that we're using is outdated, so making sure we're going through all of that stuff or even the GIFs that we're using. So it's that, and it's like, "Cool, let's take two weeks to do that. And then let's go and do the right thing."
Charles: (30:06)
What are you learning about yourself from a leadership standpoint?
Justin Gignac: (30:12)
Hmm. Well, I feel like I've always been an empathetic leader. Probably the joke is I cry over everything, but I think now it's like really talking, even just last week conversations with my team about mentorship and just really stepping back more. I don't want to be the one always doing the podcast interviews. I don't want to be the one always doing the talks. I want my team to be ... they're incredible and they're doing incredible things and I want to help elevate all of them to that level too. And so it's putting more of a priority, and for me of having that be my role. How do I help lift other people up as opposed to just being the person that says this is what we're doing. I think I have a lot more to learn. I think I have a lot more to learn from my team and from the community.
And I'm excited about it. Like I told you earlier, I just turned 40 yesterday and it was a thing that I was dreading for a long time because I was so used to being the youngest everywhere. And now I'm just like, yesterday just felt amazing. And I'm like, this is just the beginning. And so I think just for me continue being willing to continue to grow and to listen and do whatever I can to help my team and kind of fulfill my personal mission of doing whatever I can to make creatives feel less alone.
Charles: (31:37)
What are you afraid of?
Justin Gignac: (31:43)
I'm afraid of not fulfilling my potential. And I think now that ... That's always been a fear of mine. I was always afraid of dying young and not fulfilling my potential. And now I'm afraid of not fulfilling my potential in the way of not pushing myself hard enough to do everything in my power to help others.
Charles: (32:06)
That's really well said. Thanks so much for coming back on the show. It's so good to see you.
Justin Gignac: (32:10)
My pleasure. Thanks, Charles.
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