Thread by @notnathan

[THREAD] Today marks the one year anniversary of the release of the open letter from 600 Black advertising professionals that sparked a mass movement for change in our industry. I want to take a moment to reflect on the lessons learned and where we need to go next.

Lesson 1: Identifying the problem is easy. Solutioning for it is hard.

In my opinion, the success of the open letter is largely due to the clarity of its demands. By sticking to twelve focused problem areas, it gave agencies a roadmap for change.

But a roadmap isn't enough.

Outside of the release of agency diversity data -- which turned out to be relatively easy despite decades of claims to the contrary -- and commitments to change to improve representation, I have seen little progress on the 10 other action items.

Part of the reason I believe we saw movement on diversity data and commitments to change is because I made it a priority that @600andRising create #CommitToChange which provided uniform solutions for those issues.

Once I stepped down, no further solutions were created.

This is not actually a knock on @600andRising. It is an incredible burden to solution for an entire industry and many others who are better capitalized, like @4As and @AAFNational have tried and failed in this endeavor. Which brings me to

Lesson 2: Progress Must Be Crowdsourced

Among the many initiatives that were spurred last year, I have consistently rated @RGA's Make / Change to be among the most effective. Quarterly reporting on diversity data along with details on approaches taken and success seen is a model that is transparent and scalable.

If more agencies took this approach, not only would agency staffers feel more confident that their leadership was taking progressive action, but agency leaders could learn from eachothers successes and failures, and build upon them.

Every agency is different. There are precious few one size fits all solutions. But with enough experiments conducted across enough agencies, we would be able to learn what solutions are generally most effective, getting us closer to an industry wide solution for equity faster.

Lesson 3: Non-Profits Are Better In Theory

Prior to organizing as a non-profit, @600andRising was able to operate with speed and communicate with its supporters transparently. Once we organized as a non-profit, that speed and transparency gave way to bureaucracy and double-speak

This was not at all intentional but the complex laws governing how a non-profit must be operated are largely at odds with the speed at which a social movement must be run.

By laws had to be drafted. Meeting quorums needed to be met. Approval chains needed to be created for comms

The entire board was stacked with top industry talent who was working on a volunteer basis and all of whom had heavy demands from their jobs. It was simply untenable.

Moving to a non-profit structure was intended ensure the movement would endure. It crippled it instead.

Lesson 4: Collaboration Over Conflict

From the very beginning, the comms strategy I put in place was one of antagonism, provocation, and, if I'm being honest, a bit of a flair for the dramatics.

And it was successful. For a time.

The goal was to ensure that everyone understood the depth and gravity of our industry's failures, so that we could make the progressive changes needed for reform with urgency.

In retrospect, I think that goal was achieved early on and a pivot in comms was necessary to lower the temperature and allow more space for industry orgs and agencies to solution.

Instead, I became increasingly more dogmatic which led to the alienation of many potential partners

This lead to my most infamous mistake: Challenging the orthodoxy of @ADCOLOR.

Though it is a myth that I never reached out to ADCOLOR leadership in private, had I been less dogmatic & more focused on collaboration, I am certain that we would have been able to partner for change

Instead, what resulted was an overly dramatic shit show that distracted from the issue at hand, split supporters of the movement, and plainly, led to the downfall of @600andRising.

It is my greatest failure as a leader and a lesson I will never forget.

Lesson 5: Public Pressure Works

For all the missteps made, the core thesis behind the open letter held true: Industries and companies only change when they are held to account publicly.

Reasonable minds can disagree on whether my rhetoric struck a fair tone, but there is no doubt in my mind that we would not be where we are today without the efforts of myself, @3rdGeers, @dereklwalker and the many others who stepped up to apply public pressure to the industry.

As we look forward, I believe it is critically important that we continue to apply pressure to this industry and its leaders to show up, put in effort, and make meaningful change.

Leaders in the industry must resist the urge to take being held to account personally. It is our job as leaders to take shit, to face criticism, to make changes that feel impossible.

The future of Black talent in advertising depends on it.