Lessons from the Stars — One Year of Mixing Board
A perspective from Mixing Board founder and convener Sean Garrett
A year ago Mixing Board launched with the purpose of raising the value of comms and brand marketing work and the people who do it. At the time, the only thing I was sure of was that it would look differently than I expected after a year. I got that part right.
Mixing Board began with a Noah’s Ark of 60 comms and brand leaders as members. Since then, it has grown to a complementary group of 130 experts — largely through the serendipitous connections and recommendations of members. These people are senior comms leaders of all types, CMOs, content creators, community builders, public policy experts, brand strategists, creatives, and so on for some of the most dynamic organizations of this millenial. They’ve all seen, built and run some things.
At the outset we sought to find ways that allowed our members to share their expertise while getting paid for their valuable time and perspective. Along this path, it became clear that we were a Rorschach Test for how people viewed comms and brand work and this was reflected in the inquiries that came our way. We needed tight definitions about what our community would be uniquely suited to do.
While we always will retain the flexibility to work “off-menu”, we ultimately created two core areas of focus:
- Advisory. How we do this is straightforward. Who does this is totally unique. We bring in multiple members who would otherwise be impossible to get in the same room to provide their perspectives, ideas and recommendations to organizations about to enter a big year, a big moment or simply want fresh eyes on something significant that they are working through. Workshops are the most typical format for this work. Some convert the workshop team into an ongoing advisory structure.
- Talent (Sourcing & Development). Sourcing talent through our members for senior comms and marketing roles is our most popular offering. Companies appreciate the infusion of qualified candidate suggestions, and it’s a great way to compensate our members for advice that they have all collectively been giving away for free for too long. If a member suggests someone for a role and that person gets hired, we split a finders fee with our member. On the talent development side, Mixing Board members will soon be working with a select handful of organizations to help mentor, train and inspire their comms and/or marketing teams. There’s a strong demand for helping teams become stronger practitioners in real-world ways that are specifically applied to their needs and the moment that they are in — as opposed to generic coaching or training.
These were the bottom-line business learnings. Super useful, but, more profound was being able to get a front row seat to the future of comms and community.
Here are three of the top lessons after one year of Mixing Board:
No Leader is an Island
Comms and marketing leaders have often led a lonely existence within organizations. Most of their colleagues in other departments think they know how to do their jobs better than them while understanding very little about how the functions actually work. It’s very easy to assume that your challenges are unique even when untold numbers of fellow travelers are facing the same thing.
One of the most valuable resets of the pandemic was shaking people out of this mindset and toward learning from others — no matter how fancy your title or experience is.
What was unexpected is how people wanted to learn in a community like Mixing Board and how it might reset the traditional employer/employee relationship. While group Zoom discussions or even a classic conference panel can have value, our members found far more profound insights via directly working with other members on projects that either Mixing Board facilitated or that they created on their own.
Yes, this means that people with full-time roles (and also our many members who are now consultants) team with others to help figure something out for other companies. This was hard to wrap my Gen X brain around. But, when we surveyed members about what they like most about projects, it was learning from fellow members so that they can take what they learned from the experiences back to their primary work. This is more side-growth and less side-hustle.
It’s also consistent with the perspective of the marketing futurist Rishad Tobaccowala, who said last year that “the top companies are working to find ways to enable cultures and processes that allow talent expanded freedoms to practice their skills, to fit the companies into the story of the talent lives versus fit the talent into the story of the company’s life.”
Community as a Constellation
Mixing Board’s formation was an intentional act of complexity. It would have been far simpler if we all had the same job titles instead of mixing together folks like a designer from IDEO, President Obama’s chief speechwriter and a Snap board member with brand marketing expertise. We’d be easier to describe at the very least.
But, I’ve long believed that roles like brand, content and community have far more in common with what modern comms is and what it will become than not. Yet, it took gazing at the whole of Mixing Board to really begin seeing the interconnections and possibilities for collaboration. (You can see for yourself when you glance through our “Studio Session” series of interviews with more than 20 Mixing Board members to date).
Indeed, when you can see all the individual stars in Mixing Board in the same sky, you see the forming of a constellation. You see connecting points between people that you would have never noticed if you were merely looking at job titles or functions. You stop “othering” and begin to better understand how to bring people from different worlds together. You start to learn and listen in new ways that help you lose assumptions and gain perspective.
Powerful simplicity doesn’t come from taking the obvious route but from working through complexities and coming out on the other side with a path that others may not have considered. This is what we are aiming for here.
The End of Zero Sum Thinking and the Beginning of New Shared Incentives
I co-founded two different “new approach” consultancies before Mixing Board. Both times we entered very early markets and were literally told by others in the space that there wasn’t enough room for us and them in the tiny municipalities of Washington, D.C. and New York, respectfully. Likewise, one of my consultancies became part of a holding company that I still admire, but when we tried to collaborate with others in the family, we found that, at best, incentives weren’t always aligned and, at worst, others were … circumspect to the concept of collaboration.
I knew that there must be a better way and took every opportunity to find and help align awesome folks within our industry to share knowledge and elevate our work. But, it wasn’t until the pandemic that the ground shifted. In another (quite vibrant) comms community that I started in March 2020, I saw an immediate shift from competitive to vulnerable to generous. People put out calls for advice out and others offer their time and resources to help relative strangers work through an issue — over and over again. Even agency leaders are collaborating to learn new ways to improve their operations or to find and retain talent.
These lessons went into the building of Mixing Board and, especially, in who is part of it. Generosity of spirit is a must.
But, generosity only goes so far. What will really extend and cement this mindset shift is with new shared incentives. Since day one at Mixing Board, we’ve been exploring ways to not only find ways for members to shift from the dreaded “pick your brain” conversation to one where there is a defined shared value. We also are learning the right balance between centralized actions and far more decentralized offerings. Mixing Board is not a near-term DAO candidate, but we can learn from them and other emerging structures to find ways to incentivize members to come up with new ideas and products.
All of this will speed and deepen those connections between the stars in our constellation. And, more profoundly, well-considered incentive models could inspire connections and collaboration with others in our solar system. Matching abundant thinking with innovative incentives could create a whole ecosystem of individuals, products, consultancies, firms and communities that creates more positive change in our industry in the next five years than the last 50 years combined.
We shall see. We’re still learning.
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