What is success?
A couple of weeks ago Jose Mourinho, manager of Chelsea and massive, massive arsehole, described Arsène Wenger, manager of Arsenal and person I’d like to be my genial uncle, as a serial failure. This was in response to Monsieur Wenger suggesting that people who blatantly downplay their chances of winning something they can obviously win do so because of a fear of failure. Jose (a man who likes to blatantly downplay his chances of winning something he can obviously win) took huge offence at this (even though it’s true) and went on the attack.
And he had a point, actually: Arsène, by one obvious measure (major football trophies) is a ‘serial failure’. He tries to win four of them every year and, since 2005, has not managed it.
But, looking at the bigger picture, one could point to the fact that Arsène laid the groundwork for the modern approach to football in this country: proper diet and fitness, state-of-the-art training facilities etc. He also built a club, being instrumental in Arsenal moving to a new, much bigger stadium, giving them a better chance to compete financially for the future through their self-generated income. He has also discovered, bought and sold many players at a huge profit to allow this development to occur. So by some definitions, those that Mourinho could never come anywhere near because he’s an immensely unpleasant and insecure mercenary prick who only wins trophies by spending hundreds of millions of pounds (in fact, he ought to thank Arsène for inadvertently changing English football into the kind of thing billionaires want to invest in), Arsène has been very successful indeed.
So there are many, many definitions of success, a fact worth bearing in mind when you’re wondering if you’ve managed to achieve any.
For example, you might have gone a fair way into your career without snaring that elusive Cannes Grand Prix or stint at Wieden and Kennedy, but is that failure? It is if that’s what you were attempting to do, but what if the processes that led to those targets left you a bitter, distant spouse, or deeply unhappy as you realised the extent to which you had overvalued such aims? Can we define that as ‘success’? As the man in this TED talk says, you can lose when you outscore somebody and win when you’ve been outscored. For him success comes through peace of mind as a result of knowing you did your best and remembering that life is about the journey, not the destination:
I’d suggest that only if climate change has been reversed and world peace has been secured by my own fine deeds would I consider my time here a success. Then again, I set quite high standards for myself.
What about you?
Brilliant. Thanks.
The definition of success is often set by your employers as much as they are by yourself. Chelsea expect only one thing. And shallow and contemptible as it often is, it has worked, as their recent trophy haul has proved. AW is expected to challenge for trophies now that he has done the far harder job of building a strong club with scant resources compared to CFC.
And now the relating it back to ‘us’ bit. The usual thinking is that agencies like W&K hire you just to win stuff. But even in those trendy, hallowed halls, there are teams there who know their job is to shore up ‘difficult’ clients and keep them in the building. That may be enough for them. It may just be enough to nurture the younger teams. Some may just want to hold down a job and have a laugh with their beardy colleagues.
I used to measure success simply in terms of winning awards. Now it is near the bottom of my imaginary list.
I am so unimpressed with so much award winning work, whether it’s scam or the sort of stuff that only appeals to people in our industry, that I can’t get too fussed about them anymore. The whole idea of awards is insular and a bit daft anyway. The approval of a few people hardly compares to the appeal the creating something of lasting value unless you are a tiny minded so and so.
Success is when you figured out what success means for you personally and give yourself wholly to it. Deep stuff for a Monday, eh?
Do you remember ‘Golden Nuggets’? Klondike Pete? Now that really was a cereal failure.
Fuck off. It’s Monday.
Bravo!
The good life is seeking the good life.
Bogusky wrote about this early on in his days of blogging: Why not take a moment to define success before you pursue it?” I still look back at it because it’s about intrinsic success vs. extrinsic.
I thought this was one of the most thought-provoking pieces I’d read in months. In fact, it actually made the hairs on the back of my neck stick up because it felt like it was talking directly to me: I am a long way into my career – a heck of a long way and I still haven’t bagged a Cannes Grand Prix (been nominated) or a stint at W+K (freelanced at some quite fancy places). I have days when I think it’s not going to happen. I have other days when I think like Churchill: “Never give in. Never give in. Never, never, never, never…” A lot of my friends have achieved the kind of career highs that I wanted. The thing is, this industry is so competitive and there are so many talented people out there, I knew it was never going to be easy. To be honest, looking back, it probably has made me bitter, and with each passing year, possibly a little more so. But I like to think I can compartmentalize it most of the time, so it doesn’t spill over into my personal life and I don’t think it has made me a distant spouse and father. I’m also aware that to anyone outside the industry my ambitious would seem massively overvalued. Have I been successful? By the TED talk man’s yardstick, yes – I’ve always done my best. By my calculations, no – I’ve fallen way short of my ambitions. But do you know what? After all this time in the business, I have no regrets. There’s nothing else I would have preferred to have done.