Ep 192: Joanna Coles of Northern Star - ”The Story Teller”

This week’s guest is Joanna Coles. She is the CEO of Northern Star Acquisition Company, the former Chief Content Officer for Hearst Magazines, and former Editor-in-Chief of Marie Claire and Cosmopolitan. She sits on the boards of Snap and Sonos and advises some of the world’s most influential businesses.

She’s also brilliant at telling the story of what’s going on all around us, in ways that we haven’t heard before.

It is widely - and I think incorrectly assumed - that for any creative business, the key to winning is to have better talent.

Having the best talent helps.

But the businesses that win, unlock talent best.

I can’t tell you how many companies I have been invited into, whose reputation on the street or in the press is that they’re struggling or decaying. Or in some cases, the story was they were dying.

For years, I’d walk into the businesses and assume that one of the problems would be the they had mediocre talent.

It was never the case.

The talent was always much better, much better, than the reputation, than the work, than the results. It was the organizations that were failing. Usually because of a failure of leadership sensitivity and imagination.

Creative businesses win or lose based on how successfully they take disparate, talented individuals and combine them together to produce extraordinary outcomes. Whether that’s ads or code or clothes or cars or content or ideas.

As Joanna says, we’re moving into an era of heightened individualism.

Suddenly the talent has discovered that they have choices and opinions and standards and expectations of their own.

Can you adapt fast enough to meet them? Or are you walking around frustrated because people won’t do what you want them to any more.

Welcome to the age of talent. It’s going to be interesting.