Mike is a senior designer and creative director who for over twenty years has helped international brands to become leaders of their fields.
For twenty years, I have worked without a purpose, helping companies selling more of products no-one really need. For the next twenty years, I want to work on something that matters.
I love my job. I love that moment when everything just falls into place. It might be a single line of advertisement copy or that last photograph from a photo-shoot where everything went wrong that changes everything. You just know it will work, that you finally solved your client’s problem be it selling more products, changing the perception of their brand, or helping them recover from a PR-disaster. But regardless of how successful I’ve been in my role as a senior designer and creative director, none of the hundreds of projects I’ve worked on really matters.
For twenty years, I have helped companies selling more of products the world doesn’t need. For two decades, I have educated the organizations I worked with about the importance of establishing a solid set of values to guide everything they do. I have echoed Jim Collins mantra that profitability never can be a primary driver and that all successful businesses have a higher purpose for their existence. Still, I have failed to follow my own advice, using salary as a measure of my success.
Continuing this road, in twenty years from now, I will look back at a mile-high dump of garbage resulting from my hard work. Long-forgotten stuff produced by thousands of exploited low-paid workers in some faraway country. My career will have made a significant negative impact on the climate and the ecosystems of the world. For me, this is no longer an option.
In twenty years, I want to look back at a career where I was part of solving many of today’s most pressing problems. A career where I was part of the solution, not the problem.
If you share my vision, let’s talk!
