Volume 177: Where Are All The T-Shirts?

Where Are All The T-Shirts?

tl;dr: Intruder syndrome & why clients need intruders.

Recently, I had the good fortune of being invited to the Unicorny podcast with Dom Hawes, which was fun to record and hopefully fun to watch. (I never watch or listen to myself, so I don’t know). The two episodes are here and here if you’re interested. We had a nice chat about marketing as a trade (my position) rather than as a profession (the misguided goal of many).

Afterward, I was reflecting on the fact that the first time I was on a podcast, I felt the most incredible sense of imposter syndrome, whereas this time, I was much more relaxed.

Imposter syndrome then came up again recently when catching up with a former colleague whom I hadn’t spoken to in, goodness, decades. I must admit to slightly dreading the conversation ahead of time because we were never close. While I’d always respected his fearsome intellect, I never thought he actually liked me all that much.

Anyway, it turned out to be a wonderful conversation. At one point, he mentioned that he’d always felt an extreme degree of imposter syndrome as a designer from a working-class background having business conversations with Oxbridge-educated peers and clients (not me; I barely scraped through at a Scottish university). Anyway, in hindsight, this revelation made a ton of sense.

So, this got me thinking about imposter syndrome, being an imposter, and how much, if you’re in the consulting or agency game, your imposter status is a huge part of the value you provide.

There’s a story I was once told by a former boss, which is my favorite imposter story because it changed the way I think about it.

If you don’t mind, I’d like to share it with you now.

The story starts with a brand consulting firm winning the pitch to work on a rebranding job for one of Europe’s most prestigious private banks. After winning the pitch, there was to be a kickoff workshop with the client team in London, where they’d discuss the challenge, share early insights, and seek to put some directional meat on the bones of the project.

So, a hand-picked team that was felt would best fit the needs of a conservative, discreet bank for the super wealthy diligently prepared the workshop, the client team flew in from their European HQ, and everyone turned up suited and booted the next day.

The workshop was apparently a bit stilted, not the kind of flow you might be looking for. Something was clearly a bit off. So, during the first break, my former boss took the primary client off to one side to ask how things were going and to see if he could find a way to redirect the day.

The response from a tall, bespoke suit-wearing, 50-something-year-old was enlightening:

“Where are all the T-shirts?”

“Pardon, I’m sorry, I’m not sure I understand?”

“I asked where the T-shirts are?”

“Sorry, T-shirts? I don’t think we had any T-shirts printed for today.”

“No, no. I don’t mean the shirts. The people. Everyone here is in a suit. We don’t need people in suits. We already have all the suits we need. We hired you for the T-shirts; where are they?”

At this point, my former boss issued himself a mental “Doh!”, whipped off his tie (claiming it was the last time he ever wore one), went out of the room, upstairs to where people worked, grabbed six of the scruffiest-looking people he saw, and told them they were now in a workshop with the aforementioned private bank.

And, sure enough, with the requisite number of T-shirts in the room, the client team apparently felt more relaxed, and a great meeting was had.

I always loved this story for lots of reasons. Of trying to proactively shape a meeting going South, of listening to the client’s feedback and of being flexible, of the perils of assuming a client will be more conservative than they really are (a surprisingly common occurrence) but, most of all, I loved the insight that when clients hire us, they don’t want to hire people who are like themselves. They have had enough of that already. Instead, they want an outside perspective; they want a different kind of expertise; they want creativity and imagination. And, perhaps most of all, they want the metaphorical T-shirts.

Which, if you boil it all down, means they want an imposter.

Once you realize that a large portion of the value you provide is because you are unlike who the client already is, it brings forward a whole new liberation around how you engage with them. For example, for a long time, I thought you had to be a spreadsheet ninja to deal with clients who already were, but I now realize that you don’t. If you could solve the problem with a spreadsheet, the client would’ve already solved it because they already have spreadsheet ninjas coming out of their ears. As a result, when I work with clients around strategy, I’m pretty upfront about saying not to expect a lot of spreadsheets from me. Instead, I ask the internal people who run the spreadsheets questions about the data they may not have thought to ask before.

This brings me to another important point about being an effective imposter. How to communicate your imposter status.

Many moons ago, I turned up for work like I did on most summer days, in a T-shirt. I didn’t have any client meetings that day, I probably hadn’t shaved for a few days, and my hair was in need of a cut. As I walked back from lunch, our new business lead popped his head out of a meeting room and asked me to come in and meet a new client. So in I went, where I was introduced to the global CMO of Citi. We shook hands, I was introduced as someone who’d likely work on their business, we made a little small talk, and I left. In the room for no more than 2 or 3 minutes.

Afterward, our US CEO (a different boss from the one mentioned above) pulled me into a room and proceeded to engage in a rambling discussion about McKinsey, suits, haircuts, image, and God knows what else. After about 20 minutes of being talked at, I literally had no clue what he was talking about. Then, after a few more minutes, the not-at-all-subtle subtext started to become clear, so I asked the following:

“Are you telling me to get a haircut, shave, and wear a suit and tie because I’m the strategy guy?”

To which the answer was “Yes.”

So, I said, ‘Thank you for letting me know,’ walked out of the room, let my hair grow long, didn’t let a razor touch my face to this day, and did not put on a suit for about the next two years. Yeah, I really was that guy. I still am, if I’m completely honest. I’ve never appreciated being told what to do.

But then the funniest thing happened. The more different from my clients I looked, the longer my hair got, the wilder the facial hair, and the less suit-like the appearance, the more it seemed to work. While I didn’t realize it at the time, I was communicating my imposter status, which is exactly what clients wanted. They weren’t looking for suit-wearing, clean-cut, preppy consultants. They had plenty of such people inside the building already. Instead, they were looking for different ideas, new ways of looking at and thinking about their business, and expertise in an arena deeply rooted in a creativity they did not have.

So, while my intention was to piss off a boss I viewed as a moron who should never have been in charge in the first place (Which I succeeded spectacularly at, by the way), I was also unintentionally communicating a kind of outsider, imposter, status to my clients, which it turns out they wanted.

So, if you’re an adviser to others, consultant, or agency person, just remember that imposter syndrome isn’t something to be afraid of. It’s why you’re in the room.

So, embrace it, exploit it, and use it to your advantage.