MIT’s quality of success formula (#science) suggests that knowledge is by far and large the most important element of our professional fortunes.

Q = KPt

Quality equals Knowledge x Practice x (t)alent. (Small ‘t’ because it’s literally the least important part).

Weirdly though, (good) professional courses are few and far between. Noticeably so in advertising, which is more often than not made up of people who never studied the subject before working in the field…

But you know what’s even fewer and further between? Good teachers.

I would challenge any of us in this weird & wonderful industry to really consider what it is we know and what it is we do, and explain it to someone else. Some of us haven’t really considered it. Others are terrified of being found out. And most of us don’t really know… we just do.

Why else might we avoid sharing our knowledge? George Bernard Shaw’s 1905 stage play Man and Superman, may provide an answer.

Here’s the full passage: 

He who can, does. He who cannot, teaches. A learned man is an idler who kills time with study. Beware of his false knowledge: it is more dangerous than ignorance. Activity is the only road to knowledge. Every fool believes what his teachers tell him, and calls his credulity science or morality as confidently as his father called it divine revelation.

Ok so, you got me. I teach advertising & strategy skills as a lecturer, in my spare time.

My thinking is, when I inevitably age out of advertising and haven’t ‘married rich’ (💅), I’ll need a vocation. Preferably one with a state pension attached to it. 

Does being a teacher mean that I’m shit at my job?

Maybe.

But really, being suspicious of teachers says more about our inherent scepticism around readily sharing what we know.

Particularly in an industry which is predicated on Undefined Specialist Knowledge.

BUT (spoiler alert!) teaching doesn’t have to be a purely noble crusade. Teaching can also make us better at what we do… here’s 5 things which teaching will give you:

1. You’ll know better what you know…

Like trying to explain our day job to our grans, teaching forces us to brutally simplify what we know into a digestible, succinct format. What actually is an insight anyway? How do you write a creative brief? Why do I need to set KPIs?

This means that when we have to instil the importance of these things to a client / our bosses / our team, we won’t waffle and confuse. We’ll distill and enlighten.

2. …And what you don’t know

Like being asked ‘when was your last period?’, the feeling of dread when we’re asked a question we don’t know the answer to (or haven’t yet really considered) is real. But it also shines a light on the bits we need to hash out in our heads. Or perhaps, the bits we need to spend more time Practising (Q=KPt).

This not only makes us better at our jobs, but helps identify the limits of our knowledge so that we can (God Forbid) ask for help in building them out.

3. You’ll make the work better

Unpopular opinion: Strategy is common sense dressed up as magic. This may sound self-sabotagey, but really it can help keep us grounded when we feel defensive about an approach or need to ‘kill our darlings’ as it were. Strategy = Sacrifice after all.

But in doing so, we can actually help ourselves get out of the damn way when Creative should be stepping in (and, arguably, taking the glory). In the process, we allow the work to shine. And can provide more commonsensemagic™ to back it all up.

4. You’ll make other people better

Experienced or Fresh Meat, everyone has a lesson to impart. And everyone has room to improve. The earlier we can pass on what we know to others, the quicker their progression, their openness and willingness to also share.

It could also help partially solve the ‘brain drain’ of junior talent from our industry by fostering career-long learning & sharing.

5. And make adland better too!

The more open we can be about what we know (and what we don’t know), the less defensive we will become. This makes way for more empathy, vulnerability & willingness to help others. All things which we know (sources!) make for better cultures, work / life balances and just being better humans in general.

TL;DR:

Knowledge is the key to our professional success. But we don’t openly share our knowledge enough, keeping adland an ever-exclusionary industry. By teaching others, we can improve our own knowledge and change adland for the better. Teachers are cool. Be a teacher.