What’s The OffBeat about?
The way we work is broken*.
Burnout is the norm. The gender wage gap persists. Personal politics run roughshod over empathy. Childcare infrastructure is in crisis and parental leave is a disgrace. Racism, misogyny, and homophobia—conscious and subconscious—are rampant. Meetings are a waste of time, emails and Slack notifications and WhatsApp messages flood in 24/7, and taking actual time off is too frequently considered a faux pas.
Once in a while, there’s a glimmer of fresh inspiration from a compelling presentation or a team sync that reinvigorates you; there’s an empathic conversation with a colleague that lowers your blood pressure or a smart white paper that quickens your flow of ideas. What those things have in common, what’s enabled each of them: exceptional leadership.
I’ve been a jazz drummer since elementary school. And over the last 15+ years, I’ve held marketing and creative leadership roles at brands like Shake Shack, Sweetgreen, BarkBox, and Stella Artois. I’ve built, restructured, and tuned teams as small as 5 and as large as 50. I’ve launched Culture Councils, inaugurated mentorship programs, and created cross-functional feedback forums. I’ve also messed up a lot. In drum terms, I’ve missed cues, not practiced hard enough, and flubbed high-stakes performances.
Over all that time, I’ve discovered a wealth of interoperability between music and corporate leadership.
Leading people—not just the act of it, but actually caring about how it’s going and diligently reflecting on and improving the craft of it—takes no less (in fact, more) attention and care as delivering whatever your work product is. It’s a great privilege to manage a team. You have an outsized impact on those people’s experience of work, which profoundly affects their life as a whole.
One of the core tenets of my leadership approach is to lead from behind—to provide clear and consistent vision, guardrails, and expectations, then let people crush it out in front. Similarly, the job of the drummer is to keep the beat for the band—and to do so from the physical back of the space, holding the rhythm down so the other musicians can shine. The drums may not be the first thing your ear catches when you hear a song; but if something sounds off, you’re not wrong to look to the drummer. And often, the most impactful part of the drumbeat is the offbeat, the in-between notes that make the rhythm more unexpected—and the groove better.
So: The OffBeat mines inspiration from music, as well as psychology and culture at large, to deepen leadership at work. Whether you lead people directly, are leading people on a project, or show up as a leader in an individual contributor capacity, I believe it’s on you (us!)—leadership—to mend what’s broken in the workplace. And we can do that by examining the offbeat: bucking the trend, respectfully questioning the status quo, seeking out the unexpected metaphor.
As Thelonious Monk put it, “I say, play your own way.”
*I’m specifically experienced in and qualified to speak about corporate, aka “knowledge,” work, so that’s my focus here—but I am in no way discounting the (in many ways, more pronounced) brokenness of work outside that sphere. Our society also needs policy updates and fundamental sea changes across many of the ways we conduct our day-to-day life with respect to one another; but that’s for another space.
How often do you publish?
Every other Sunday morning.
Who’s Allison?
I’m currently the SVP of Brand, Culture & Media at Shipt, a wholly owned subsidiary of Target, where I spearhead brand, transformational creativity, and full-funnel media. I have over 15 years of experience in marketing leadership roles at consumer-obsessed, digital-first brands, including 3 IPOs (Shake Shack, Sweetgreen, BarkBox) and I led the global digital advertising and content transformation for Stella Artois at Anheuser Busch InBev.
I’m an intrapreneurial leader combining creative acumen, commercial mindset, operational excellence, and deep knowledge of the digital landscape, and have a proven track record building brands and teams within fast-paced, high-volume, matrixed organizations of all sizes.
I’m honored to have been a member of the inaugural U.S. class of 30 of The Marketing Academy, a 9-month fellowship targeting the fastest rising stars in U.S. marketing, and I was selected as one of Ad Age’s “40 Under 40” and Brand Innovators’ “40 Under 40” in 2019.
