10 Questions for Ben Malbon
Ben Malbon
Director of Strategy, Creative Lab, Google
Where are you right now?
On a plane to Denver, sitting next to a woman who appears to be suffering from the advanced stages of the Ebola virus. It’s conceivable that this may be published posthumously. I’m on my way to Boulder, CO where we’re having a meeting of the Advisory Board for Boulder Digital Works. BDW is a new kind of educational institution that aims to develop people who are generative, integrated thinkers and doers, who can work collaboratively. It tries to combine technology, creativity and business in equal measure. The Board is packed with amazing people (I’m an imposter) who want to create something a little disruptive and very progressive. We learn a lot from each other too.
What was your first job?
My first day in advertising was, coincidentally, the very first day that Google was incorporated as a business, in September 1998. My first job was as an account planner in an agency called Duckworth Finn Grubb Waters, in London. It was a fantastic, small, planning-led agency. I got thrown in at the deep end, but had the opportunity to work with and for some exceptional planners – Rachel Walker, Gary Duckworth, Ben Gregor, Gareth Kay.
What do you worry about?
I worry too much about too many things, possibly an outcome of eight years of schooling at the hands of Catholic Nuns and Brothers. I’m ridden with self-doubt, and only in exceptional circumstances actual allow myself to be happy with what I’ve done. Professionally, I worry about things not being excellent, the very best they can be. I worry about letting people down. I worry I don’t give enough time to people. I worry that I’m not smart enough.
How do you handle stress or pressure?
Without doubt, I have an unrealistic sense of my own ability to handle pressure. But anyway . . . I probably fall back on two traits. One is more micro, and is simply the ability to quickly parse overwhelming or complex tasks down to the constituent parts and then decide what’s urgent, what’s just important, and what can wait. I triage complexity. I’m horribly ordered, verging on Asperger’s. My inbox is always at zero when I turn off my Mac at night. My desktop is always not just clean, but clear. I make lists and take perverse pleasure in crossing off things I’ve done. The second trait is more macro, and perhaps more strategically grounded. I have an unhealthy interest in military history and accounts of exploration (alpine, polar, lunar, space), and I draw inspiration from people – and groups – who have faced insane pressures, often involving life and death outcomes, and won through. While I’m evidently drawn towards the hero, I’m actually more fascinated by the ‘almost hero’ – Shackleton failing to achieve his goal of crossing the South Pole but somehow bringing all his men home, safely, after two years on the ice; James Lovell failing to land on the moon but somehow finding a way to get Apollo 13 and the three crew back to Earth; the troops from the US 9th Armored who, in March 1945, ultimately failed to prevent the destruction of the Ludendorff Bridge over the Rhine at Remagen but did so long enough to deliver a severe psychological blow to the Germans. That’s real pressure. When things don’t work out the way you planned.
What motivates you most?
Having fun working with smart people to create things that make a difference, in a positive way, to lots of people. Some sense that after I’ve gone they’ll be something – even if it’s a teeny thing – worth leaving behind that I might have played a small part in making. I’m also quite childish, so the fun part is pretty important. I suppose doing silly things with beneficial results is kind of what motivates me.
Which company do you admire?
It changes all the time. Right now, I’m fascinated by NASA, and in particular the unmanned missions beyond our solar system (Voyagers & Pioneers); audacity is a term that’s used too cheaply today, but NASA seemed to embody it somehow, especially in the 60s and 70s. I’ve probably spent more time focused on organizational change and innovation in the last five years than I have on more orthodox planning (much to the frustration of the poor souls who’ve employed me), so it’s no surprise I have been interested in the original SkunkWorks at Lockheed Martin for some time. It’s another horribly devalued term today, but the original SkunkWorks group that developed new technology, mostly for the US Air Force and Dept of Defense, was genuinely an amazing covert organization that effectively hacked just about every convention of how a company should work. Of course I also admire Google; but more for the inherent unbounded ambition that pervades the company than for simply being successful. It’s truly an extraordinary place.
What blogs have you read today?
I don’t have a set list. I tend to use Twitter as a form of socially-powered rss reader instead. Ten of the people who I find most consistently dig out juicy posts, links or stimulus would be: @edwardboches @lenkendall @malbonster @steverubel @brainpicker @garethk @RGA @bigspaceship @frogdesign, and, of course @BBHLabs.
What have you seen recently that you wish you were associated with (new product, service, advertising)?
I was talking to Robert Wong, the ECD at CreativeLab, not long ago in our office. He told me a story I’ve not stopped thinking about. A friend of his had opened a Gmail account when he had had a child (I think, actually, even before they were born), in the child’s name. His friend had been writing emails to his son as a kind of record of his life as he grew up. They were now four or five years old. I thought this was awesome. Imagine if our parents had done that, how different our relationships with them might be?
If you weren’t in this business what would you be doing?
I’m a keen yet bumbling amateur when it comes to photography, but I’d like to try my hand at being a photojournalist. The last camera I bought (a Canon G10) I bought entirely because someone told me it was the stand-by choice of photojournalists, what they reached for when bullets were flying and they couldn’t get the DSLR out.
Tell us something surprising about yourself.
I have a PhD in the social psychology of ecstasy. When my college friends ran off to become lawyers, consultants, doctors I just couldn’t face it. So I managed to trick someone into paying for me to spend four years at the University of London going out to clubs. I used alt.rave and alt.drugs (imagine screens of glowing green text against a black screen) to find interesting people to hang out with; I then spent a couple of years going out all night, probably 3-4 times a week. Everything was meticulously recorded on audio cassettes and in pocket notebooks. Now, with distance, I’m quite proud of what I did (I also wrote a book which I delivered to the publisher on the Friday before I started my first job in advertising – which felt like complete closure). But at the time, it was a bizarre and narcissistic kind of life. As my PhD tutor said in my first week, ‘Well, prepare yourself Malbon. You’re clearly a masochist. I’ll tell you what a PhD is like – it’s lonely, sad, and almost certainly pointless – you learn more and more about less and less until you know absolutely everything about nothing.’
What a gutsy interview – there’s a lot here to think about. Ben’s book on rave culture is brilliant, too.