Real People: An interview with Justin Anderson-Weber, Senior Director, Strategy

What’s one interesting thing that everyone should know about where you live?

I live in Chicago. I think a very interesting thing about Chicago that people should know is why they call it the “Windy City.” It’s not because of the weather. It’s because around the time when they were deciding where to have the World’s Exposition, the folks from Chicago were so verbose and so full of hot air and talking about the greatness of their city and everything that the organizers started saying they were from the Windy City. People that are from Chicago really love Chicago, and I certainly love Chicago, too, so I’m always happy to be a little bit windy about it.

What do you love about your job?

The thing that motivates me the most is that I like making work better for other people. I like trying to create some predictive and repeatable processes to set people up for success. With AI replacing some of the work in our industry, I think the value of an agency is to establish those predictive and repeatable processes and to provide access to creativity. Creativity is one area that will never be not human.

Something that I think creative people need to understand is that even if you’re not directly thinking about something, your brain resetting itself is productive. And creativity is often sparked by new inputs. You know, you’re going to see a bird you didn’t see before on a walk. You’re going to overhear a conversation. Those tiny moments are going to influence new thinking in a way that AI can’t.

What would you say is your superpower?

Personally, I think it’s probably just relaxing–finding the space to be quiet and helping other people do that. I also make really, really good buttermilk biscuits.

During the pandemic my project was to cook biscuits every weekend to try to find a recipe that I could remember and reliably do–so that it would be likely that if I was visiting somebody, I could give something back to them, or if society had collapsed, what was I going to be able to give to the community? Well now, I can make biscuits.

Professionally, I think there are two things: one, talking as a strategist, is that your superpower has to be filtering. So taking a lot in and prioritizing, rearranging, and organizing information in a way that simplifies and inspires people to do good work and to be clear about what they’re doing. I’m good at that. The other superpower is connecting people to do good work, or to have an additive effect on the work that they’re doing. I’m good at matching different people’s strengths.

What is one thing your colleagues don’t know about you?

I played tuba. They might not know that I also have a newsletter called Of Note that is a monthly newsletter that highlights music writing worth reading from the previous month. Oh, and they might not know that I have several gold medals from national karate competitions from when I was younger.

They all know now that I was banned from Live Nation concerts for a review of Kid Rock.

What is one thing that I should have asked you but didn’t?

Probably something like “How do you get real?” I think my version of that is finding or making room for creativity in all aspects of your life.