Avsnitt
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How do you become truly self-aware as a business leader?
Nikki Gatenby is a Non-Exec Director, Cognitive Behavioural Coach and bestselling author of 2 books. She has 25 years of agency experience including 10 years running the agency, Propellernet.
In this episode, Nikki shares how she:
Articulates business visions in a novel way so they’re memorable and easy to understand Pushes for a culture where everyone can say when things aren’t working so they all develop and growLooks after people's wellbeing and avoids them burning out by regularly asking 4 simple questionsBrings in backward reflection and retrospectives so teams always learn from their experiencesEnables personal growth by getting everyone to be learn-it-alls (and not know-it-alls)Uses working style analysis so teams understand how best to work with each otherNikki talks openly about her 25-year career - including how she self-manages to prevent her two previous burnout events from ever happening again.
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How do you achieve rapid growth with a diverse team across 3 continents?
Hannah Springett is Founder & CEO of HLabs. She started her no-code creative agency just 4 years ago and has rapidly scaled to a global team of 40 people.
In this episode, Hannah shares how she:
Instills a growth mindset within the team so they believe anything is possiblePlaces authenticity at the heart of everything she does - including being open about her endeavours going wrongHas learnt to supercharge her empathy skills - especially to get the best out of introvertsValues diversity and intentionally recruits globally to increase this even moreSpends quality time with team members to properly understand their ambitions and motivations Maps out her 10-year vision for each pillar of the business, aligning everyone around a set of big lofty goalsHannah is deeply committed to changing the lives of each of her employees. She shares how she does this in our open and authentic conversation.
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Saknas det avsnitt?
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How do you grow to 300 people globally with a laser focus on people and culture?
Tamara Littleton is Executive Chair & Founder at Social Element. She started the agency as a remote-first business 22 years ago.
In this episode, Tamara shares how she:
Puts attracting and retaining brilliant talent at the top of their flywheel and as their key business objectiveUsed her corporate background to apply strategic thinking from day one and grow into a large business Leads from the back to keep out of people’s way and allow them to take the business forward Appointed external auditors to measure how well they’re doing for diversity and help them continuously improve Rolled out DISC training across the business so everyone better understands each other, is more respectful and challenges ideas Takes it as her personal responsibility to retain the culture so the team keeps turning up every day and doing a great jobTamara openly shares her 22-year journey from sole founder to handing over the running of the business and appointing two co-CEOs.
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How do you set the weather in your business and get everyone to love what they do?
Becky Simms is Founder and CEO of the agency group, Human First Collective. 14 years ago she founded her agency, Reflect Digital, which she integrated into the group last year.
In this episode, Becky shares how she:
Is driven by the mantra, “Find a job you love and you’ll never work a day in your life”Has a robust, clearly defined recruitment and onboarding process, ensuring every hire is a great cultural fitUses a ‘Vivid Vision’ and working groups so everyone deeply buys into the company directionBrings their values to life with external speakers, including a Gold-winning OlympianInvested heavily in tech to make team meetings fully inclusive and engaging for remote participantsTransitioned the agency to a flexible 4-day workweek - and has never looked backBecky firmly believes that the leadership team sets the weather for the agency. This philosophy guides all her communications.
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How do you grow while continuously strengthening your culture and developing antibodies to incompatible working styles?
Steven Writer-Maguire is Director at the consultancy Clarasys. He joined the firm 8 years ago and has overseen growth from 40 to over 200 people in London and Boston.
In this episode, Steven shares how he:
Rapidly transitioned away from a traditional hierarchical consultancy mindset to one of trust and enablementSet up a Team of Teams model where multi-disciplinary teams make decisions and collectively solve client problems by themselvesUses their monthly F**k Up Challenge so everyone can safely share mistakes and learningsEncourages people to act as business owners and make their own decisions about what’s best for the companyPuts everyone through their internal course, Clarasys Code, so they all learn about emotional intelligence and neuroscience Created the Clarasys Triangle (featuring People, Business and Clients) to guide their decision-makingSteven passionately shares his ‘why’: To build the best firm their people will ever work for. As a result, their culture gets stronger the larger they grow.
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How do you set happiness as your North Star to drive year-on-year growth for 12 years?
Jaye Cowle is Founder at Launch. She started her performance marketing agency 12 years ago. She’s overseen continued growth with a focus on people-powered performance.
In this episode, Jaye shares how she:
Placed the concept of ‘powered by happiness’ at the core of what they do internally and with clientsUses the 3 pillars of Autonomy, Mastery and Purpose to underpin team motivationAccepts that their happiness proposition can be off-putting... but it’s worth it so they don’t have a vanilla agency propositionCreated a feedback culture where people can communicate how happy they are, share ideas and celebrate each other weeklyUses their values as a common shared language in recruitment, onboarding, personal development and celebrating successesIs shaping their client offerings around their values and happiness mantra, elevating them beyond their current service offeringJaye also talks about the impact of her near-death brush with cancer 5 years ago. She leans in far more on the things she’s passionate about and lives a more amplified life.
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How do you align individual and business goals across an agency group with 120 people?
Kate Ross is Managing Director at eight&four Group. She co-founded her agency 14 years ago, sold it to an agency group, and then acquired the group 2 years ago.
In this episode, Kate shares how she:
Invests heavily in AI to boost morale and reduce fear of the technologyBuilds high-performing teams by ensuring people care about the business, about clients and about each other Emphasises her team understanding the context and taking ownership of everything they doChallenges her team to come up with ideas for business success and then empowers them to execute Actively seeks out feelings of pain in the business to help address and resolve themHas a robust 6-month probationary period to ensure new hires are a good fitKate also talks about how 3-year planning doesn’t work for them. Instead, they adopt the Kaizen philosophy of continuous process improvement.
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How do you identify your most motivated team members and get them to contribute even more?
Tim Cameron-Kitchen is founder at Exposure Ninja. He’s grown his fully remote agency to 80 people in the UK and Philippines over the past 12 years.
In this episode, Tim shares how he:
Identifies people ready for more responsibility and pushes them to do more than they think they’re ready forLeans fully towards abdication on the abdication-to-micromanagement spectrumUses a lot of process so everyone operates autonomously against their frameworksFollows a 10:80:10 model for team motivation (10% are fundamentally motivated, 80% are situationally motivated, 10% are fundamentally demotivated)Became a convert to people skills training and now invests heavily in this (especially with the leadership team)Realised he wasn’t the best person to take the business forward so handed over the CEO reins last yearTim also talks about Wednesday Wins and Thankful Thursdays… and how he uses a kitten Giphy to keep everyone aligned around their shared vision!
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How do you get quality running through every aspect of the business?
Chris Ailey is CEO & Founder at Honchō, working with the likes of Sephora, John Lewis and eBay. He started the multi-award-winning agency back in 2008.
In this episode, Chris shares how he:
Aligns everyone around their BHAG (big hairy audacious goal) to be the best search agency in the worldHires people with the skills and characteristics they don’t already haveGrants his team the freedom to try new things and to fail, whilst ensuring accountability Fosters a culture of collaboration across different teams Pushes himself out of his comfort zone to encourage everyone else to do the sameEnters lots of awards as a way of driving the team to maintain qualityChris talks candidly about the ups and downs of life as an agency leader.
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How do you create a business where both extroverts and introverts can thrive?
Zsuzsanna Recsey is CEO at the community engagement agency, Standing on Giants. Previously an executive coach, she became CEO 4 years ago and has grown the business from 25 to 60 people.
In this episode, Zsuzsanna shares how she:
Has embedded a culture of resilience, emotional intelligence and coaching through individual and team programmesBuilds trust by always assuming that her team, clients and stakeholders have the best of intentions Makes sure the leadership team consistently demonstrates their values in all day-to-day activitiesHas a process to quickly identify and address behaviour that doesn't align with their valuesHas created an inclusive environment so introverts can contribute as much as extrovertsCreates space for reflection so they can all always learn from what they’ve doneZsuzsanna’s thoughtful and reflective approach continues to create a high-performing team and a high-performing business. She’s not the typical Jazz Hands agency CEO.
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How do you set the ethos of your entire business just from its name?
Sam Fenton-Elstone is CEO & Co-Founder at Anything is Possible. He’s grown his agency to 65 people in just 6 years, winning almost 40 awards along the way.
In this episode, Sam shares how he:
Embeds the idea that ‘life is better when anything is possible’ across every aspect of the business Gets the right balance between having structure and boundaries, and granting autonomySets the business up so autonomous team members can make good decisions as quickly as possible - and so the business benefits from collective intelligenceConstantly strives to build a better, more exciting, more inclusive agency compared to the normRuns the business like a university with a disproportionate spend on L&D and a strong Alumni networkEncourages everyone to push themselves forward in a way that’s right for them - enabling the team to collectively operate at their highest possible outputSam isn’t interested in Anything is Possible becoming a big agency. Instead, he wants them to be a great agency with everyone doing their best ever work whilst there.
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How do you maintain an entrepreneurial spirit in a global marketing agency?
Ian Millner is Co-Founder & Global Chair at Iris, a business he started 25 years ago and which he’s helped grow to 1000 people across 17 countries.
In this episode, Ian shares how he:
Achieved the right balance between enjoying the journey and heading towards a shared destination Brought together the right team with the right chemistry at the very start - which naturally attracted clientsCreated a shared ownership structure to drive motivation and loyalty within the team (peaking at 50 shareholders)Allowed people to follow their passions and dreams by backing their ideas for new ventures and opening in new locationsCreated a sense of excitement and being together on a big caper within the businessNavigated taking outside investment and the impact this had on cultureIan humbly talks about his incredible journey, how it unfolded, and what he did to get his team to be high-performing.
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How do you create and maintain a culture to enable happy and high-performing teams?
Jane Slimming is Founder and CEO of Zeal. She’s been running the agency for 14 years.
In this episode, Jane shares how she:
Defined their values on day #1 and consistently embeds these into everything they doAllows people to progress their careers based on their unique factors of successIs very transparent about business performance, no matter how badly they’re doingGets people to disagree with her and then actively praises them when correct to do soLaunched the Zeal Bucket List to push people out of their comfort (and make their personal dreams come true)Spearheaded Zeal to win the award for Best Agency CultureJane was a great podcast guest with a lot of ‘zeal’. Her quote about what’s worse than having a hole in the team is truly memorable!
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How do you maintain a high-performing team when growing from zero to 100 people
Danny Bluestone is Founder and CEO of Cyber-Duck. He started the agency in 2005 and grew it to 100 people. Last year they were acquired by CACI.
In this episode, Danny shares how he:
- Balanced the competing needs of financial performance and the all-important people aspects
- Built a culture around adaptability, accountability, selflessness and having an entrepreneurial spirit
- Embedded the right type of behaviours both when the business was small and then when it became larger
- Implemented a recruitment process as rigorous as Google’s, based on their three pillars of exceptional talent
- Created a mission for each individual in the team aligned to their business plan
- Recruited the wrong people in the early days and had to deal with a large-scale team rebellion
Danny talks candidly about what worked well and what didn’t, during his almost 20-year agency journey.
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How do you get everyone in a large business to be high-performing?
Vanella Jackson was Global CEO of Hall & Partners for 13 years, leading a business with a total revenue of $130m.
In this episode, Vanella shares how she:
- Applied a ‘learn, stretch and grow’ ethos to underpin high performance across the business
- Made sure people felt valued and supported across 100s of team members
- Maintained an entrepreneurial spirit within a large, networked agency
- Identified her allies, the people who would always tell her the truth about what’s going on
- Got everyone pointing in the same direction with a purpose and vision mapped back to their roles
- Liberated herself from self-criticism and then worked to liberate others
Vanella signs off our conversation with a challenge for all business leaders - listen to find out what this is!
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Welcome to Human Powered, the new podcast about creating a high-performing agency or consultancy business.
In the first episode, our host, Trenton Moss, explains why he's launching the podcast in conjunction with his bestselling book, also called Human Powered.
