By | Sridhar Ramanathan
These were early days of my becoming a head of an office at Ogilvy. I had big dreams for the office. After a couple of years I started a new line of business for Ogilvy – Direct Marketing. I was like a man possessed. I was chasing perfection in everything we did.
My way of doing it was what I had seen many of my bosses do. Find fault with what is shared. Finding fault with a new idea is the surest way to kill it. I had a strong point of view about everything. I spent my free time reading books keen to build my expertise. I had read almost every book in our office library.
Every time people shared an idea I would tell them what is wrong with it. And the manner in which I did it was most discouraging. I turned out to be the number one idea killer in my office.
That is when they changed my name from R Sridhar to R Shredder.
I didn’t realise what I was doing till much later. When I set up Ogilvy Consulting I had an opportunity to get trained in Synectics – a creative problem solving process. That was an eye opener.
Here is a way they explained creativity.
Creativity is a function of Climate x Thinking.
