What Rock Climbing Taught Me About Leading an Ad Agency
My friend and client, Joe Baker, took me rock climbing a couple weeks ago. Joe is nuts. He takes his wife for “leisure” climbs that go so high and take so long they have to sleep strapped to the side of a cliff hundreds or even thousands of feet in the air:
I’m a wuss. My idea of a great climb is a visit to the local climbing gym. But when Joe offered to take me for my first outdoor climb I was excited to shed my wuss status and go for a real climb. He took me to Eldorado Canyon in Colorado and led me up a 500 ft wall.
The climb was tough. It stretched me both physically and mentally. I’m not sure I have words to describe the experience of being perched on a stone wall 300 feet off the ground, exhausted, toes and fingers aching, and the only way off the cliff is 200 more strenuous feet up the wall. That’s the moment you have to take a few deep, calming breaths and do some pretty serious self-talk:
- “You can do hard things.”
- “Stay calm and take it one step (or pull up) at a time.”
- “If Joe can do it, then by-damn, I can too!” (self-talk isn’t always true)
Spoiler alert: I made it!
My fingers, toes, and knees were bruised. I had aches in muscles I didn’t know existed. But I made it! And if you haven’t guessed yet, I’m really proud of myself.
The experience with Joe reminded me of some important lessons that apply in how I lead Harmon Brothers. Rock climbing is an extreme example of how risk mitigation enables creativity, innovation, and even risk-taking. I think of rock climbing in two very distinct phases:
Phase 1: Risk Mitigation
Rock climbing equipment and procedures actually make the sport relatively safe. In fact, rock climbing equipment rarely fails. Almost all climbing accidents are a result of someone not using the equipment properly or ignoring essential parts of the procedure.
With Joe, we started by reviewing and practicing the procedures while we were still safe on the ground. The procedures ensure we check, double-check, then triple check our risk mitigation strategies (ropes, anchors, knots, etc.) The procedures also ensure there are several layers of redundancy with our anchors (i.e. if one anchor fails there are at least two more to keep you safe).
Obviously, a climber can’t ever remove ALL risk. We can’t mitigate against earthquakes, landslides, freak weather events, etc. Climbing will always have dangers built-in, but when done properly, the chances of a tragedy are so low that I can feel comfortable in my decision climb.
Phase 2: Adventure
After checking and re-checking our risk mitigation measures before each leg of the climb, I found I was able to shift my mind to focus on the creativity and problem-solving of actually climbing the wall. I didn’t have to think about whether or not I would live or die. I knew the safety measures were there and that knowledge allowed me to try things even when I wasn’t sure if they would work — it allowed me to take risks.
A couple of my risks reminded me that I’m still an amateur who has a lot to learn. I fell twice. Both times I landed gently in my harness with nothing more than a little scrape on my knee to show for it.
What invigorated me, however, was that most of my risk-taking showed me I was more capable than I ever realized. My climbing shoes could grip tiny footholds that I never imagined possible. I climbed through sections that seemed impossible to me until I actually did it. Several times I clung to the wall stumped on what my next move would be. Each time I caught my breath, gathered my thoughts, made a plan, and went for it.
It was a genuine adventure!
At Harmon Brothers, I push my team to take creative risks. I want them to try things even when we aren’t sure if they will work. We’ve done this in big, visible ways with our Squatty Potty Pooping Unicorn or FiberFix’s Manly Man driving a car off a cliff.
More importantly, we do this every day in much smaller, but still meaningful ways. We hold a weekly Hypothesis Lab where we brainstorm new hypotheses to test, we analyze our current tests, and we log learnings from our completed tests. Some hypotheses take hours to test, others take months. This culture of constant testing is essential to our future. We can’t continue to do what made us successful; we have to constantly search for what will make us successful tomorrow.
For example, Shane Rickard, one of our creative directors noticed that Christopher Nolan uses variable aspect ratios in his movies to control the focus of his viewers. Sometimes the ratio is a cinematic 16:9. Other times he’ll shrink the width of the screen to focus your attention on something. Shane came up with the idea to apply that principle to our ads. We had never seen it done in the world of mobile advertising. We weren’t sure how it would work, or if it would work at all. The first ad we made with variable aspect ratio was Camp Chef’s Gill God campaign. The results were phenomenal. It allowed our directors to better control the focus of the viewer. View-through rates increased significantly. This tactic is now widely used throughout the advertising industry.
It’s important for me, and probably anyone else leading a company, to create a safe culture for experimentation. The culture we create is like the ropes and anchors on my climbing adventure. My team members can’t be afraid to take creative risks and try things that have never been done before. Sometimes they will fail, and that has to be okay. Other times, in fact often times, they’ll discover something new that changes our future.
At Harmon Brothers, our mission is to Share Better Stories. This has deep meaning to us and comes packed with ambition. It’s not enough to just share better advertising stories like we’ve done so far. We are excited to apply our Share Better Stories mantra to other industries too. I hope you’ll come along for the ride. The future is bright!
