Well being: Ditch the office hierarchy to encourage ideas

To ensure your workplace is loaded with creativity, creative expert Al Moseley recommends a flat structure with little hierarchy.

Al Moseley, the president and chief creative 180 Amsterdam, does not use a table in his board room. Instead, his team sits on sofas in a circle. Courtesy Dubai Lynx

Would you prefer a descent into the sensible or an ascent into madness? That’s what Al Moseley, the president and chief creative at the creative agency 180 Amsterdam, asks as he argues for the benefits of creativity at work.

He says that madness is the “ori­gin of great ideas”. “Sometimes the best ideas are the most outrageous ideas. You have to create an environment where you allow people to say or do things that will be risky,” says Mr Moseley, who shared his thoughts at the advertising festival Dubai Lynx this month.

According to last year’s State of Create study by Adobe, 77 per cent of respondents felt under pressure to be productive rather than creative at work – yet 56 per cent felt they were expected to think creatively.

Only 31 per cent of the more than 5,000 respondents felt they were living up to their potential.

Mr Moseley is a Briton who has been with 180 for seven years and living in the Netherlands for a decade.

Clients of the agency have included Qatar Airways, sports brand Asics, clothing company Benetton, logistics firm DHL and Nintendo for the PlayStation 4 console launch.

The best way to make the workplace creative, he says, is to make the structure “very flat”.

“Even our boardroom does not have a table,” he says, “instead it has a sofa. We all surround the problem. There’s no hierarchy with a circle.”

So many companies have huge hierarchies, Mr Moseley says. In many advertising agencies, he adds, a copywriter reports to an associate creative director, who reports to a creative director, who reports to an executive creative director, who reports to the chief creative officer.

“We all became very sensible and focused on driving return on investment and measuring every second of our worth but we need to break out to create great brands. We need to not just deliver products,” he says.

“It crushes the individual spirit of someone who wants to feel individual responsibility for their work,” says Mr Moseley. “We allow people to rise up.”

Q&A: Al Moseley tells Suzanne Locke more about the challenges of being creative:

Why is the agency called 180?

It's a quote from the director Francis Ford Coppola, which we have up on the wall at the agency. "Whenever you get into trouble, keep going. Do a 180-degree turn. Turn the situation halfway around. Don't look for the secure solution." Coppola spent 16 months filming Apocalypse Now in 1976 in the Philippines, instead of 16 weeks. He fired Harvey Keitel, Martin Sheen had a heart attack, Marlon Brando turned up 20 pounds overweight and had not read the script. Warner Bros thought Coppola had gone mad. But he had wild ambition for the movie – he wanted a Nobel Peace Prize for his peace efforts, not an Oscar.

Any famous innovators you can name?

There are four components to creativity – ambition, vision, dedication and fearlessness. James Dyson was ambitious – he literally reinvented the wheel, with a wheelbarrow with a ball instead of a wheel. Then he turned to the vacuum cleaner and hairdryer. He was turned down by all the major manufacturing firms. Jony Ive, who designed the iPhone for Apple, designed a toilet, bidet and sink for client Ideal Standard, which was rejected for being too costly and modern. David Bowie lost two record contracts before he made it. And Muhammad Ali came back from the wilderness – his world heavyweight title was stripped away and his boxing licence was revoked for seven years for refusing to fight in Vietnam.

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