life lessons from star trek
This is what every top agency manager needs on their desk – a copy of Dave Marinaccio’s ‘All I need to know in life I learned from watching Star Trek’. Mr M is an American adman who realised some years ago that the solutions to all of life’s problems and, in particular, those that arise in the advertising industry, could be found in the episodes of Star Trek. (Obviously we’re talking about the original, high fat, pointy sideburns series, not any of the lesser spin-offs, from the Next Generation onwards.) This is a sort of management/self help book based on the wisdom and lore of Trek. It came up in conversation yesterday and, having got my copy years ago, I was pleasantly surprised to see that it’s still in print and available on Amazon.
There’s lots of useful stuff in the book, from advice not to pitch in a red shirt (because the guy in the red shirt in the landing party is always the one who gets killed first by hostile aliens) to the observation that it’s always good to end the working week/episode with some light hearted socialising and bonding (‘The laugh on the bridge’).
One section in the book talks about mission statements and observes that Star Trek has a mission statement clear enough for even the dumbest crew member to understand and remember:
These are the voyages of the Starship Enterprise. Her five year mission: to explore strange new worlds, to seek out new life and new civilizations, to boldly go where no man has gone before.
"Suppose you are the dumbest person on the ship. How long do you think the mission will last? Five years? Very good. And suppose you encountered a strange new world? What should you do? Explore it, perhaps…Boldly.
"Now try a simple test. Ask a number of colleagues at your place of work, ‘What is the single most important thing our company is trying to accomplish?’…Chances are you will receive many different answers…What if your company encounters a strange new opportunity? Without a basic philosophy even a business’s smartest employees have to improvise when they meet a new or challenging situation. We could do worse than rewriting the Star Trek mission statement for whatever venture we are on."
Now, Dave doesn’t point out another fact: that Star Trek wisely reinforces this mission statement by repeating it at the start of every episode but, anyway, he made me wonder about a Trek-style mission statement for Wieden + Kennedy. Our current mission statement is:
We exist to create strong, provocative relationships between good companies and their customers.
Maybe we could replace it with this:
This work in progress is Wieden + Kennedy London. Our ongoing mission: to explore strange new new forms of communication, to seek out amazing new clients and new ideas, to boldly go where no agency has gone before.
And of course, this mission statement would be followed by our own rousing and slightly odd theme tune, accompaied by imagery of the agency, er, zooming (boldly) through space towards new ideas.
Or maybe not.
Live long and prosper.
