Find the best person for the job, says Fredrik Carlstrom, and stay out of the way.

Fredrik Carlstrom: If I only knew. I mean, I think both when I produce, and when I do advertising-- when I wear my creative director hat-- my philosophy’s always been, “Find the best person for that particular job, and sort of stay out of the way.” So that’s kind of how I try to do it. I think I’m good at finding talent, and making people go in some sort of the same direction, a little bit. So yeah, find good people. Stay out of the way.

Question: How Do You Motivate People?

Fredrik Carlstrom: I think people are motivated by very different things. Some people are motivated by money, some people are motivated by status. Some people are motivated by fun. I think in our industry, thankfully, there’s a lot of people who’re-- who want to create stuff. I mean, an advertising agency is one of the most fun places in the world, I have to say. It really is a lot of fun, ’cause you’re sort of really doing a lot of stuff. I mean, we’re producing so much stuff. You know, we have probably 40 projects going at the moment. And so I think you motivate people by not being too sort of stuck in process; by trying to make people do the best they can, and to do better than they thought they could. I think that’s probably the way I try to do it, to push people to do better.

Recorded on: 6/12/08