Bringing Batman To Work: A True Superhero Story About Creativity
18 years ago, after almost a decade of studying and working in the US, I was back in Ireland and was working at a little place called Google. Back in those days, Google’s EMEA HQ in Dublin was only a few hundred people (compared to now, where it is closer to 6000 people, maybe more), and there was a sense of promise and buzz about the place. I was learning new things daily in a new online business world and felt lucky to be surrounded by interesting, smart people. Unsurprisingly, I enjoyed those early years at Google, but creatively I was unfulfilled.
In the years prior, while living in New York, I had been surrounded by creative inspiration and opportunity at every turn. I had immersed myself in spoken word & poetry at the Nuyorican Poets Cafe and storytelling nights at The Moth, which pushed me to write more ambitiously and get my work published for the first time. Great gigs were always plentiful in the Big Apple and I was often going to two or three a week, which led me to forming a band of my own (at one point we rehearsed in the same studio as the Wu Tang Clan, although we did not bring a similar level of ruckus). With the burgeoning internet came other possibilities, so my best friends and I started a wildly creative, arty website called artlick.com (it’s since gone to the digital server in the sky), where we constructed quirky stories, satirised popular culture, created oddball art installations and designed interactive online experiences. I even took up painting in my apartment, with the largest canvases being splattered and sprayed in the alleyway outside (much to the dismay of our landlord who had to clean up my Pollocks on the pavement). All the while I was holding down a regular job at the Modern Language Association in downtown Manhattan. My two parallel lives (creative and professional) were happily co-existing and upon my return to Ireland, I knew that I wanted to do something to spark equally electrifying creative experiences, while holding down a day job. Once I had secured my gig at Google, my focus started to drift to that creative calling. Through a few twists of luck (a venue was available and my musician friend Enda was interested in staging a gig too) and a bit of old fashioned hard work, The Brownbread Mixtape was born.
The Brownbread Mixtape was a monthly themed cabaret-style event in the Parlour Bar upstairs in the legendary Stag’s Head pub. Each month I would pick a theme, invite some musicians and poets to perform a set related to the theme, and I would write and perform radio-style comedy sketches with our resident sketch troupe, The Brownbread Players (a.k.a my talented actor friends Eva Bartley, Gus McDonagh and Sean McDonagh). It was exactly the kind of creative environment I had dreamed of, and unbeknownst to me, I was refining vital skills that would stand me in good stead for my professional life too. As MC for the show, I was able to hone my public speaking skills, while also rapidly improving my craft as a writer (specifically when it came to writing for a live audience), as well as learning how to write to a tight deadline. But more importantly, it allowed me to surround myself with other creative minds that I admired and could learn from. I was in my element.
Like most DIY enterprises, The Brownbread Mixtape started slowly and our audience grew gradually over time. We never did any real publicity and instead let it be a little secret that was passed around amongst friends. What began as maybe 20 people in a room, eventually built to 100+ every month with lines out the door. It took us to festival stages like Electric Picnic and Longitude, with hundreds more in the crowd, and soon we had a real thriving community. I had inadvertently stumbled upon Seth Godin’s notion of “1000 True Fans” and the decade I spent building The Brownbread Mixtape would end up being a real high tide mark for my creativity.
Then one day at Google (during that Brownbread Mixtape decade), I was sitting through some dull meeting about low hanging fruit and oceans that were not scheduled to be boiled, and there was a discussion about the need for some creative input on the project in question. Everyone in that room spoke in strange reverential tones about creativity, as if it were some magical otherworldly wizardry that only a few mere mortals could understand. (That’s not to say there weren’t creative people at Google, they just weren’t in that room). And as the conversation continued, not once did they think to draw on any creative ideas that may have been present in the meeting. In fairness, I didn’t offer up any myself, but I was fiercely protective of my creative life at the time and didn’t see any value in bringing it to my work. It was just my job, I thought. Then a little lightbulb went off. Literally. There was a faulty light fixture in the room. But a lightbulb also went off metaphorically.
“What if I brought my creative energy and ideas into work?” I thought to myself
Not a radical idea (I did say it was a little lightbulb) but a blindingly obvious one that I somehow had overlooked. Until then my two paths were entirely separate, albeit parallel. Creativity was this other superpower I had that I channeled into my own art and creative work, but never brought to my “work” work. This separation even extended to the name I used in each setting. In a professional work context I was Karl (my legal name) and in my creative endeavours I was Kalle (my Swedish nickname). This wasn’t even a conscious decision. It was often an administrative thing, where I would present the required documentation for my contract, and Karl Ryan was the moniker on that paperwork, so it inevitably stuck. Largely because it felt awkward to try and let people know after a few months in the job that my name was actually Kalle. Also I may have been subconsciously keeping the two identities separate in some way. So I just went by Karl my entire working life. I didn’t love it, but it was fine. It was, after all, my name. And I used to joke to close friends that Karl Ryan was my corporate Bruce Wayne identity and Kalle Ryan was my creative Batman identity. In my heart though, I knew that Kalle, the creative superhero, was my true identity. So, one day, not long after that meeting, I brought Batman to work.
The simple act of bringing a more creative lens to my work utterly transformed my career and accelerated it faster than a turbo boosted Batmobile. Within months of embracing Batman (even Batman needs a hug), I secured a new role in Google as Internal Comms Lead for the EMEA HQ , and by harnessing my creative identity more fully, I did career-defining Internal Comms and Employee Experience work – From leading events at the 3Arena and founding the Cloud 9 innovation lab at Google , to establishing and leading the Global Video Communications and the Internal Comms Innovation teams at Meta. Admittedly I’m skipping over a lot in that paragraph, but being a superhero requires a little bit of mystery too.
As my career progressed, my Batman utility belt filled up with creative tools, tricks and word-based widgets that allowed me to leave my creative fingerprints on the culture & employee experience of two of the biggest companies in the world. Not bad for a kid from Waterford who, much like Batman, had lost both of his parents too soon. Although my parents were admittedly a painter and a weaver, rather than wealthy titans, but no less instrumental in my creative origin story.
That creative approach also had an influence on the way I interviewed and hired people too. Beyond the candidate’s experience, I was always more interested in their niche interests and unheralded talents. My belief has always been that most roles can be learned on the job, so the most interesting candidates were the ones who had unusual skills that didn’t necessarily have any obvious relevance to the job. (Those unique skills were invariably additive to the team and had an amplifying effect on our work). So, bringing Batman to work wasn’t just applicable to me, it was a transformative way to build a community of trusted superheroes around me. An office Justice League, if you will.
After the redundancies at Meta last year (I was not made redundant, the role was, thank you very much), I decided it was time to embrace my new journey as an independent professional consultant & advisor. If I was to be my own boss, then I wanted to be able to say “I’m Batman”. Not literally (That would be weird). So I made a point of using Kalle as my name in all my professional dealings. I updated my LinkedIn. I refreshed my website. In client meetings and pitches I introduce myself as Kalle (I usually add that it kinda rhymes with Tallaght or Chevy Impala, which may or may not be helpful). So, now I’m Kalle. And not just that, I’m Kalle the innovative communicator, and my superpower is creativity. And I’m happy to say that I feel more like myself than I have in years, and I’m doing some of my best work too.
Of course, I am aware that this whole extended Batman metaphor is slightly imperfect given the fact that Batman does not actually have any superpowers, nor do I have a fraction of the limitless wealth afforded to him. But like most superhero stories these days, I have retconned it to suit my narrative (I am a comms expert after all). Nevertheless, the year ahead will undoubtedly have its fair share of plot twists, as well as the occasional office Joker, but I will continue to embrace my inner Batman more fully and dish out my own authentic brand of creative justice. As Batman himself said “It’s not about who I am underneath, but what I do that defines me”. And we all know that every superhero story has a moral at the end. That feels like a pretty good one to me.
If you want to enlist Kalle and his creative superpowers in 2024, you can send a digital Bat Signal via email or message him directly on LinkedIn
