Chicago Ideas Week: Don’t just think it, make it

Marc Landsberg, founder and CEO of Chicago-based social media agency Social Deviant, has strong feelings about ideas. That is, he thinks they’re pretty useless.

Instead of ideas, he wants actions, and not just any actions — mission-driven actions.

Landsberg’s company hosted an event Monday evening as part of Chicago Ideas Week (irony noted). But the theme was “Turning Thoughts Into Things” because, he said, ideas and strategic thought are only as good as your ability to execute, create and distribute them.

“If you think it, you’d better be able to make it,” is a mantra often heard around the office, Landsberg said. He comes from a traditional agency background, having worked at MRM/McCann, ARC Worldwide and Leo Burnett.

When Landsberg founded Social Deviant two and a half years ago, he aimed to build the world’s “kindest” company, one prizing transparency, honesty and lack of ego. He said companies typically aren’t kind, and he wanted to prove that kindness is not antithetical to commercial success. Today, the company counts Twitter, Farmer’s Insurance and Jacob Leinenkugel Brewing among its clients.

“If a statement about your company doesn’t guide your behavior, then it’s useless,” Landsberg said. “You’ve got to turn that conceptual thought into a thing.”

But Landsberg has a particular definition of kindness that doesn’t entail holding hands and singing “Kumbaya.” To him, kindness is about presenting clients and employees with the most and best opportunities as transparently and urgently as possible.

Social Deviant runs on a “kindness operating model,” which Landsberg said affects how he hires, compensates, trains and works. His 30 employees, whom he calls “deviants,” use that model to guide their daily behavior.

“Everything we do has been designed to lean into that, shape it, form it,” Landsberg said. This includes a program called Deviant University that allows employees to focus on majors — the roles they were hired for — and minors — the areas in which they want to grow. He said most employees have entrepreneurial ambitions. Some of them had side projects on display at the event.

“We don’t need people lurking around on LinkedIn in their free time looking for the next thing,” Landsberg said. By allowing employees to be honest about their passions — like building the “Facebook for space,” as one deviant has done — increases trust and allows them to help each other in their varied pursuits.

Not every company can, or should, hold up his version of kindness as its guiding principle, he said. Other founders may have different passions.

Rather than look at external trends, Landsberg recommended that founders identify a topic that fires them up personally.

“Too many entrepreneurs look externally and they think there’s a commercial white space to chase,” Landsberg told Blue Sky after the talk. “If it’s not viscerally relevant to you, because entrepreneurship is hard, you’re going to tap out.”