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I could position it that it was like a, you know, positive in that I'm super
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resilient and uh, you know, I was just determined to succeed. I think actually I stayed because I was afraid to leave.
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The key first task for any leader is to build belief. If I could say one thing to to leaders at any level is that
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culture isn't bigger than you. Culture literally is you. that your ability to
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create an environment where your people achieve things they wouldn't achieve if
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you weren't there is the key and so I think one of the key tasks for a CEO this is one of the piece of advice I
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give to anybody trying to change any business or just lead any business is >> welcome to grit in the boardroom I'm
00:00:46
Erica IAS Norris today I'm joined by someone who has spent his career reshaping what it means to lead at the
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Pop. Chris Hurst is an award-winning author, leadership coach, and former global CEO of Havs Creative. Before
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that, he led Grey London through a dramatic turnaround, transforming both its culture and commercial performance.
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He challenges the myth of the heroic leader and instead argues that clarity, courage, and culture are the true
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engines of performance. We'll be talking about what it really means to lead through crisis, how CEOs build trust
00:01:20
with boards when pressure mounts, and how to stay human in an age obsessed with speed and certainty.
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>> Hi Chris. >> Hi. >> Welcome to Grit in the Boardroom. Let's
00:01:29
get into it. >> Yeah, nice to be here. Thank you. >> So, every leader has a moment that tests
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their judgment. Um, for you, was there a single crisis or turning point as a CEO
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uh during your career that defined how you think about leadership? >> It definitely was. Um, but mine was, I'd
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say, a very slow motion sort of grinding [laughter] experience rather than a sudden like
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oneoff event. >> It was this unfixable business. And I was hired by this very charismatic, also
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very young CEO. and he hired me and another a team of four people to fix this business. And um and for me like
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this was the dream job. I got made managing director. So I was a deputy to the CEO basically. And and and I
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remember like I don't think anybody said this out loud but I kind of remember we
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was had a had a sort of a first meeting together, you know, probably at some fancy restaurant or something, I don't
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know. And I remember sort of the sort of mood around the table was everybody looking around at each other and
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thinking, well, you know, I think I'm pretty good. And uh and and and I and I
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kind of know they're all pretty good, so this is going to be this is going to be
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a cakewalk, right? I mean, we're all good and it's going to be great. It's
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going to make our careers. And basically um Nemesis follows Hubris, right? Basically. [laughter]
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Um [snorts] and so within six months, the charismatic CEO had gone under and that's a whole story in itself. And
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within about 18 months, I was basically the only one left of this of this group.
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And then I was passed over successively to be the new CEO. So I think I had two or three possibly uh new bosses uh over
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the next six years. And so six years later, I'm now no longer, you know, in my early 30s. I'm now in my late 30s,
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nearly 40. Um and the business was still a dog of a business. And I'd been hired
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as part of the solution, but now I was part of the problem. And I and I genuinely thought honestly I think with
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some justification that I kind of screwed my career really. I mean you know you know I'd been hired as but you
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know this new wave and we'd failed and we'd failed for a long time and so it
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looked like I wasn't going to get promoted there. It looked like I wasn't
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going to get promoted anywhere else. Why would anybody in fact realistically I wasn't even going to get a sideways move
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because why would anybody what what have I got to recommend my success as a managing director essentially [laughter]
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you know zero. Yep. >> The short version of the story was that I kind of got a bit lucky. Uh they hired
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a new boss, another new boss. I was passed over again and unexpectedly he got promoted very quickly. Um and he
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didn't particularly want to be he wanted to do something in this job first, but
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he was given one of those well either you take it or we hire somebody else. So what are you going to do? So you take
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the job, right? And he took a chance on me. So suddenly I find myself a CEO of this business that I'd been there
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failing in and and really that was a pivotal point for me because I I kind of felt like I had nothing to lose. I'd had
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this unexpected chance where I thought that my chance had gone and I didn't have great clarity over how we were
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going to fix this business which was still a dog for business. But what I did know was two things I suppose. one, I'd
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seen a lot of I and others had made six years of mistakes. So, I was determined we weren't going to make those mistakes.
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We were going to make new ones all of our own. >> Yep. >> And second of all, I felt like cuz I
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kind of had nothing to lose, I felt like I'm not going to treat the business's
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crappy reputation as a millstone, I'm going to treat it as an opportunity. So,
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if we're going to fix it, we're going to have to break some things. We're going
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to have to make lots of mistakes, but we're going to we're going to really be
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iconoclastic and go for it. And I I I know and over the next three years, we transformed that business. We we
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absolutely transformed it. We turned it from a terrible terrible one of the worst ad agencies in London to one of
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the best in London, one of the best in the world, arguably because if you're
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one of the best in London, you are still one of the best in the world. And I think that swing that that the sort of
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the six years that preceded and the six years that that followed that that event
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I think both halves of those contributed equally if you like to my view on what leadership is and how to do it well.
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>> Really interesting. And a couple of the things that you said are also interesting for kind of follow-up
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questions. So you say you were passed over a number of times to be CEO. I've
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seen that in my own experiences, not myself personally, but I've worked in seuite roles and seen people apply,
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sometimes a CFO, sometimes an MD of a subdivision applying for that CEO role and then the majority of the time they
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decide to leave or I don't know if they're pushed, but they they make a decision to no longer stay with that
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business. How did you keep up that resilience? Because that's a number of times, right? Well, I could I could
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position it that it was like a, you know, positive in that I'm super resilient and you know, I was just
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determined to succeed. I think actually I stayed because I was afraid to leave. >> Okay.
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>> Um because I think it beca it was a very big promotion for me. >> Yeah.
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>> From where I was to become ND that was a big step. Like I say the point was I was
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very young really. I was too young for the job and I was certainly too young for a job when I suddenly didn't have
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the boss who hired me to sort of teach me and bring me through. >> Yes. >> So I think that I didn't have the
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courage really to step out because stepping out would have meant stepping back. >> Right.
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>> And so in a sense I feel like I was a little bit trapped. I mean it's all in
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my own head. I mean nobody nobody was physically trapping me but I trapped myself in a way. So whether that
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perception was true or not, I certainly think there's some truth in it. And that's why, you know, I don't want to be
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overly self-deprecating, I mean, you know, he, my boss, to his credit, you know, we
00:07:35
were successful when he appointed me. So I obviously had done something to demonstrate to him that it was it was
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worth taking a a risk on me, I guess, and making me CEO. But nevertheless, I mean, I think if he hadn't been
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promoted, and I I had got to the point when I'd been passed over again where I
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thought, and in fact, I'd begun to say to them, I I I have just got to the end
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of my tether. I am going I have to step out of here. I don't know what I'm going
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to do, but I can't keep doing this. So, a number of, you know, the planets did
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just align at the right time, I think. >> So, there's a certain amount of
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resilience needed in there as well, though. There's there's definitely resilience. I mean, and I think I am
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quite a resilient person, but but the resilience isn't the only explanation for why I
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stay. I didn't stay because I thought I'm going to be super loyal and you know
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I mean I did believe in myself and I did think you know there is a path for me and I did think I was doing a good job
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but at the same time you know I I feel like that was a you know after I mean it was six years and it's quite a long time
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and so in time that was eroding away um >> but yeah I think I think you always you
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need resilience in life. >> Indeed. >> Indeed. And when you were CEO of that
00:09:01
business and you were part of that turnaround, I mean, there's many leaders that will try um and fail.
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>> Obviously, you'd been part of a team that hadn't been successful, but
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obviously you were no doubt a smaller cog in that machine, and then all of a sudden, you were in in a place where you
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could make bigger decisions. How how do you even start to look at that? How how do you approach that?
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>> As a consequence of this, one of the things that I mean it really made my it
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really made my career. That that that moment made my career and I suppose then really my reputation as a CEO became the
00:09:40
person who fixes broken businesses. And I then went on and and and sort of did it again subsequently. But I'll be
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honest, that isn't necessarily a path I would have deliberately chosen. It's a
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hard way to make a living. I I often joke with people and think, you know, it would be really nice if once like a head
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hunter would ring me and say, "Oh, hey Chris, we've got this business. It's
00:10:02
just a great business. It's doing it's doing just fine. They just want somebody
00:10:05
to come in and just keep doing what they're doing." But I never got that
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call. I always got the, "Oh, Chris, right, got look, hear me out before you
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say no. [laughter] It's a basket case. So I think that I remember that that quite clearly
00:10:22
actually that moment where I it gets announced that I'm the CEO and I stand up in front of the company and uh and of
00:10:30
course for 6 years I had been in their shoes looking up at the succession of new CEOs so I could look there was about
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200 people in the company at the time >> and and therefore I knew what they were
00:10:42
thinking >> because I'd been I like been standing there myself Right. That's a challenge
00:10:47
though, right? >> Yeah. And they're sort of standing like this. And uh and what they were thinking was, and
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this is common in most businesses, if not all businesses in that position, people don't need convincing that change
00:11:02
would be a good thing. People know if the business is a crappy business. It doesn't mean they're necessarily
00:11:07
unhappy. It doesn't mean they're not, you know, there's there's people can be
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happy in businesses that aren't performing well. People can have good careers in businesses that aren't
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performing well. It's just harder and less common. >> But what people were thinking was, okay,
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we know that change would be a good thing. But why should we believe that you are going to be any different to the
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long line of people that have been before you and stood and said the same things as you and
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>> it hasn't changed. And I think that um for leaders all leaders all new leaders
00:11:39
in any role I mean not many leaders find themselves in such a sort of a particular circumstance as that perhaps
00:11:46
but you don't have to be a CEO to be a leader. The key first task for any leader is to build belief I think is for
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people is to not just say the right things. You know we're going to be the agency of the year in three years time.
00:11:59
Yeah. Right. I mean okay fine we've heard this before. but to help people believe that that is actually going to
00:12:08
happen. And the thing that I was determined about and the the advice I would give to every leader in any new
00:12:15
leader, well any leader, but certainly any new leader is you have to start with a real sense of urgency. We were
00:12:23
determined to create a sense of physical change as quickly as possible. So I I think of it as like concrete. Okay. So
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if you imagine, you know, when you lay a path for example, okay, and you put the
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mold down and you pour the concrete in and the concrete's wet. Yeah. Okay. And
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you cats leave their paw prints across it and people squiggle their name in it with a stick. In time, that concrete
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sets. >> And if you want to change it, you have to smash it. You have to take hard
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physical actions to create space for something new. Uh the other the other example I use is
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like a sledge stuck in the ice. Okay, if you want to if you know where you want to get to get there, the first thing you
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have to do is free the sledge. So you don't just you don't just stand and push
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it in the direction you ult want go in. You kick it, you swear at it, you smash it, you rock it, you fight with [snorts]
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it to get it free. And then once you've got it moving, you can then start to be
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more specific around, you know, the point you want to get to. And so what we did was we really set about being
00:13:33
absolutely iconoclastic. And I'll give you a I'll give you a great example
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that's not an example you ever read in business books. Um and it now that people working more flexibly it might be
00:13:43
slightly less relevant now although I think it's still it still matters. But
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in those days of course everybody everybody went to the office every day. And um the the first thing that we did
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was we said we are going to get rid of all of the offices in this building and we are going to just mix everybody up.
00:14:02
We are we are going to literally pull names out of hats out of a hat and that's going to determine where you're
00:14:08
going to sit. So when you come to work on Monday, you are going to physically experience something completely
00:14:15
different. This is a different business that we you're in right now. And people of course hated it
00:14:23
>> because there's nothing that people people if you want to get people's
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attention >> you can write them strategic presentations and all that stuff and
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people are like yeah right for all this before get their attention tell them they're sitting somewhere else
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[laughter] >> and people really pay attention right and so >> it's their personal space
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>> it's their personal space and what what matters is though so first of all
00:14:44
getting people's attention but what we did was we told people why and what the
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way The way that change needs to work is you need to explain to people the logic for
00:14:55
why you're doing what you're doing. And even if people don't necessarily like
00:15:02
all the things you do, they at least don't just feel like it's capricious.
00:15:07
They they understand what it is you're trying to do and why you're trying to do
00:15:10
it. And we said, well, I won't bore you with our whole strategy, but the short
00:15:14
version of that is because we want to work in a different way. We don't want
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We were in advertising. It's a service business. We are our whole thing is we're not going to ask our clients to
00:15:23
fit around us. We're going to fit around our clients. And to do that, we need to
00:15:27
smash down department boundaries. Um, and we don't want you to be able to tell
00:15:32
what people do based on where they sit. But maybe we do want to be able to tell which clients you work on based on where
00:15:39
you sit. And what I became obsessed with certainly in that first 12 months, 18 months, I became obsessed with this idea
00:15:48
of how do we make change a permanent like permanently slightly off balance. >> Yeah.
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>> So we don't ever want that concrete to fully reset. We want to continually be
00:16:04
thinking h okay how do I make uh Monday different to the preceding Friday when people come to work I mean you can't do
00:16:13
something that dramatic every week but some way of pushing us forward continuously um
00:16:19
>> it's that incremental 1% change right >> it's incremental 1% but I don't think
00:16:24
that is the way you approach inflection type point of inflection type change >> okay
00:16:30
>> you know that we did Not we absolutely did not take a certainly in that first
00:16:36
12 months we did not take a incremental gains approach. No >> we took a two-footed knee high tackle
00:16:43
approach [laughter] you know we we took a we are going to absolutely make this place feel as
00:16:49
different and we're going to keep doing things. So we tore up every process that
00:16:55
we had in the business. We said we're going to get rid of every single process. We are going to change people's
00:17:00
roles. we are going to redefine the roles of how we run individual client businesses. Some of the things we did
00:17:07
didn't work. So actually the seating thing it wasn't a disaster but it wasn't
00:17:12
a success. >> Okay. >> So what we did was we went okay we've gone too far.
00:17:17
>> Mhm. >> So we have to dial that back slightly. So there is there you know in some
00:17:22
places this doesn't work. We're not going to put everybody back in their
00:17:24
offices. We're not going to do that. We're still going to stick with the
00:17:26
principles but we're going to refine the principles. And I think that was an important lesson
00:17:32
to the business because the important lesson was we to for us to get to where we're going to need to get to, we're
00:17:38
going to have to try lots of stuff and we're going to have to accept that some
00:17:41
of that stuff's not going to work. And when it doesn't work, we're going to say
00:17:44
this isn't working. We could we just try something else. Yeah. >> We're not going to stubbornly say this
00:17:49
is a principle. We're [clears throat] going to say the objective is what's m
00:17:53
what matters and we'll try stuff and we'll learn on the go as to what works
00:17:57
and what doesn't. This is a very different approach to leadership than I have seen in I'd say the majority of
00:18:04
organizations that I've worked with or worked for. >> I think Yeah, me too. Yeah, me too. But
00:18:10
and and it was that sort of stuff that we that we smashed up. >> Um and and and people say so like you
00:18:18
know this like I say this business was a notoriously crappy business and we we genuinely and publicly transformed this
00:18:27
business. We were we were agency of the year three years later which was preposterous really. We said that's what
00:18:32
we were going to do but I mean I don't think we even believed it if I'm really
00:18:34
honest. But and people would say so what did you do? I mean okay wow I mean what
00:18:38
what did you do? And really I think what we did was we made the culture the strategy. That's really what we did. Uh
00:18:46
and and I I talked to as I'm sure you do I talked to a lot of uh CEOs in all
00:18:52
sorts or not just CEOs but senior people in all sorts of different businesses. >> Yeah. And culture is one of those words,
00:18:58
right, that I I almost now like wish I could find a different word for it because I feel like people's eyes glaze
00:19:06
over slightly um when you mention it because it's sort of seen as this thing that yeah, we know
00:19:13
it's sort of important, but it's kind of really difficult to change, isn't it? and I can't easily see
00:19:21
it and touch it and it's a and it and a lot of people who talk about it talk
00:19:26
about it frankly in my view in a kind of way which is which is this sort of slightly let's all be nicer to each
00:19:33
other and let's have pilateses at lunchtime and fresh fruit and culture has got nothing to do with these things.
00:19:37
Culture isn't a soft squishy thing. It's a hard physical thing. It determines how
00:19:43
we behave in that environment. Which is why the same person can go from team A to team B and go from zero to
00:19:50
hero or hero to zero. It's the person doesn't change. The environment changes.
00:19:55
And I think it matters in all organizations. And one of the big fallacies about it, I think, is that
00:20:01
people talk about it as even CEOs, they they don't say this, but I can kind of see the the mist glows across their
00:20:09
eyes because people see it as somehow something that's bigger than them, right? It it's somehow bigger because I
00:20:17
particularly people who maybe even senior people who aren't the CEO see it as it matters, but it's somehow bigger
00:20:23
than me. I can't do anything about it. And the reality of it is if you're a
00:20:28
leader, whether you whether you're a CEO or whether you're a department head or
00:20:32
whether you're have a team of six, you determine the culture in your team. Organization culture is not homogeneous
00:20:41
across an organization. It's a patchwork. Each team within that organization has
00:20:47
its own flavor of that culture and it has its own flavor because it has a different leader and the leader sets the
00:20:53
culture in that team. So if I could say one thing to to leaders at any level is that culture isn't bigger than you.
00:21:00
Culture literally is you and you can change the culture almost immediately. But the way you do that is you have to
00:21:10
change how you behave. >> That's interesting. And you've had experience of having smashing that up
00:21:16
and starting it again. Yeah. Do you do you think or have you found that the organizations that you go into are kind
00:21:23
of the same type? Um so therefore it's translatable or do you think that you
00:21:30
could go into any organization and kind of make a positive impact if they were flatlining as it sounds like you're kind
00:21:38
of >> that would be incredibly arrogant of me to suggest that I could go to any
00:21:41
organization and transform it. Um, at least at least I'm not saying this in public. [laughter] Um, I think I could
00:21:50
go to any organization and make it and make a positive impact on the performance of that organization. Yes.
00:21:56
Because most I'm sure there's exceptions, but most organizations really are about people. I mean, people
00:22:03
lie at the heart of those organizations. I know there's this debate now around
00:22:06
the role of AI and things like that, but where people are concerned. So I spent time with all sorts of different
00:22:12
organizations from you know ad agencies which is where I started my career to Google and I mean I I went and did a
00:22:19
some work with Nissan and the car factory you know in Sunderland it's huge plant it's incredibly impressive
00:22:24
organization and I remember going up there and thinking you know goodness me I mean what I don't know anything about
00:22:32
about car factories what on earth am I going to say to these people about I don't know about car factories and and
00:22:40
so we were in a room and had about a hundred of their senior leaders in the room
00:22:44
>> and guess what? They're just people and the challenges they face are people
00:22:47
related challenges. >> Um and so actually what I found is everywhere that I've gone and everybody
00:22:53
I've talked to in every organization I've been in, your ability to create an
00:22:57
environment where your people achieve things they wouldn't achieve if you weren't there is the key. And so yes, I
00:23:05
think I I think I could make a difference. I and and and One of the things I've always been quite
00:23:11
comfortable about doing is being realistic about what I think I can do and what I can't do as well. So, so and
00:23:18
I think that's key for all leaders to be able to recognize within any organization, whatever your title is,
00:23:25
which are the bits of this am should I be spending my time on? And there's going to be a number of other parts that
00:23:34
are very important that I'm not best at. whoever whoever I am and what I need to
00:23:39
do is ensure that I have the right people with the right autonomy and the right support and all those other things
00:23:45
to enable [snorts] them to do brilliantly in those areas. And in fact, ad agencies are interesting in this
00:23:51
because the most important person in ad agency is the creative director. I mean,
00:23:54
they're the people that physically, you know, if you're a client and you go to
00:23:57
an I mean, meet me, I'm the CEO and they go, "Well, yeah, be like Chris. He seems
00:24:00
like a nice guy, great, but I'm like, but he's I'm not going to write the ads
00:24:03
or direct them or any of that kind of stuff." >> Yeah. And so or indeed the strategy
00:24:08
director or the digital all these other roles. I always saw my role as being the person
00:24:15
who did I suppose two things ensured that our most valuable resource which was our most highly paid people who were
00:24:23
the strategy directors and the and the creative directors. Yeah. >> That they were spending their time in
00:24:27
the places that mattered most to us as a business. It's not always easy to do.
00:24:33
And second, could I create the environment which is really a cultural point to enable them to perform at their
00:24:39
best? How did I enable my our star talent to deliver maximum value to our business?
00:24:51
So I presume I'm right in thinking that you feel that a CEO is part of not necessarily the whole piece but it's the
00:24:58
first kind of starting point of culture and building a culture out works within organization because if that doesn't
00:25:07
work >> the rest of the organization you may have pockets of good leaders and good
00:25:12
culture but like you say the overall >> approach is going to be challenging
00:25:16
right >> obviously the CEO is the most important person in the business um and the person
00:25:22
most who is able to exert most effect on the performance of the business should be the CEO and the biggest cultural
00:25:30
influence is the CEO. So when I when I see people with titles like head of culture and stuff like that
00:25:38
>> I mean I'm like it's just it it's just a joke. It's just laughable. It's just
00:25:43
it's just outsourcing. It's just saying we think culture matters but we don't
00:25:47
want to do anything about it so we're going to give it to somebody as a job seller and we're going to put it over
00:25:50
there. It fundamentally misunderstands what culture is. Culture is the behavior of leaders. Um and all leaders uh have
00:26:00
to understand that and the more seen you are the more influence you have. You're
00:26:05
not a sole influence but the more influence. >> Yeah. Lots of CEOs find that boardrooms
00:26:12
can be quite political or at least as political as they can be strategic. >> How did you build trust and alignment
00:26:21
with your board um especially when ch when kind of the plans changed? You spoke a little bit about that rather
00:26:26
than just maintaining that status quo. How do you bring everyone else along? Well, I think there's a [sighs]
00:26:36
I mean there is there is an an element of I hate the expression but you know carrot and stick about that.
00:26:43
First of all, clarity is king, you know. So, and this and it isn't always the
00:26:50
case, but the first thing you have to do is you have to be ensure that everybody
00:26:54
within well ultimately as many people as possible in the whole organization, but
00:26:58
let's just start with the, you know, the the senior team. You have to be sure
00:27:03
that those people understand not just where you're trying to get to, but how
00:27:08
you're going to try and get there. So let's say objective and strategy in
00:27:13
simple terms. And they have to buy into those things. That's the important point.
00:27:19
>> They could conceptually understand how you're trying to do it, but whether or
00:27:25
not they feel that they're going to take part in that is a separate thing. And
00:27:29
that's where you get and and those people those people who might understand and smile to your face and all that kind
00:27:36
of stuff, but decide that for whatever reason they're not going to play ball. They are in some ways the
00:27:47
most dangerous people to have in your leadership team to have around you because the rest of the organization are
00:27:56
looking at you as a team and they can see those gaps. And so I think one of the key tasks for a CEO is and I this is
00:28:06
one of the piece of advice I give to anybody trying to change any business or just lead any business is you have to
00:28:13
ensure that you have an indivisible unit at the top of your organization. A a a group that absolutely doesn't just
00:28:22
buy in but feels co-ownership of what it is you're trying to do. And if and ultimately I don't think you
00:28:33
should shoot from the hip. I don't think you should turn up on day one and go
00:28:35
that's you. That's you. That's not you. That's you. That's not you. I I think
00:28:39
you have to behave in an adult way and take ideas from other people and give things time. But ultimately if you have
00:28:46
people that aren't prepared to do that, they have to go because they'll derail
00:28:49
you. And and and I think there's a sort of a triage approach you can take to
00:28:54
that. I always say to people there there are not all senior roles are created equal. There are some roles that I think
00:29:03
I always think to myself, well, you know what? I'd like, let's say we've got 10
00:29:07
people, let's say, on the senior team. I'd like all, of course, I'd like all 10
00:29:12
to be absolutely absolutely, you couldn't put a cigarette paper between them. But you might think, okay, but
00:29:19
that person, they if if I don't get them aligned, I don't think that is critical right
00:29:26
now. I see them as like rocks in a stream. we can flow around them. We'll come back to them. We'll come back to
00:29:32
it. And sometimes those people when they can see, oh actually things seem to be going quite well, it might be my
00:29:39
interests to get with this group, you know, and then they join in. And sometimes they don't, in which case you
00:29:43
can deal with them later. There are other people within that group that you have to have aligned. So if your CFO
00:29:51
isn't aligned, you've got a big problem. you know that that that is a role that
00:29:56
is capable of totally derailing um what it is you're trying to do for example
00:30:01
yes and there'll be I picked CFO because it's a you know it's a role that we all
00:30:05
understand different companies have different types of roles >> and so I've been in roles where
00:30:10
sometimes I've been super fortunate and you know we've just had a CFO that I
00:30:14
just thought wow this person's just absolutely incredible they're going to
00:30:16
be a great partner to me off we go uh and other times that we haven't moved until we've changed that
00:30:24
Yeah, and that's a challenge in businesses that I've seen. I've seen
00:30:29
CFOs step up to be CEOs and then bring in a new CFO. And that is very interesting because from what I've seen,
00:30:40
it becomes quite challenging if you can't let go of your old job and actually fully embrace your new job. And
00:30:46
it can be a quite different mindset to be a CFO to being a CEO. a completely different mindset. [laughter]
00:30:53
>> The blue sky thinking doesn't doesn't happen or doesn't have to think clearly.
00:30:59
Yes. >> With regards to CFO role. Yes. Whereas the CEO role has to be focused on
00:31:04
innovation and potentially change evolution whatever that might be. The CFO has to be that rock that stays
00:31:10
steady and is that >> that's totally different jobs. Being a CEO, lots of CEOs, they talk about
00:31:20
accountability. >> In practice, it can be really lonely being a CEO. >> Yeah.
00:31:25
>> When did you last make a decision that no one else wanted to make and what gave
00:31:30
you that courage to follow through? >> I certainly for me the most difficult
00:31:34
decisions were often people related decisions because well for obvious reasons they're you know they're human.
00:31:40
It's humans. other people and uh and you often having to make decisions. Well,
00:31:45
let's let's call it what it is. Firing people. >> Y >> uh it's a lot it's a lot more harder
00:31:50
firing people than hire than hiring. You know that hiring people can promoting people can be a difficult decision, but
00:31:55
it's not of an order of magnitude of firing people. And often um or not often, well, yeah, I think often you
00:32:01
might find yourself firing people who you know well. >> Yes. >> Right. Who you've worked with for quite
00:32:05
a long time, who you know well. And I think that can be pretty lonely on a number of levels.
00:32:16
I think it's lonely because ultimately you're conscious that it's particularly
00:32:21
if it's a senior person. I mean a lot of difficult people related decisions get
00:32:26
dodged. We all know that. >> Yes. >> Right. Right. And it's and it is and it
00:32:30
is a major barrier for businesses to progress. I talked about that example before when you have your senior team
00:32:36
and you've got somebody who is a nice person. You like them, but they're just
00:32:39
obviously not on the bus. >> Yeah. >> Um but that person who's not on the bus
00:32:46
might have a fantastic relationship with a client. >> Yes. >> For example, that's a a classic example
00:32:51
of is that. And so there's really good reasons for why there's like tactical
00:32:59
reasons outweigh the strategic reasons if you like. But ultimately those people are capable of massively holding you
00:33:07
back because they fracture your team. They have a huge impact culturally for example because people look at people
00:33:13
around you say well you were talking this talk about culture but that person you know the culture only doesn't really
00:33:19
matter does it because that person could do what they like just because client X
00:33:22
really likes them. So actually the rules don't really apply do they? principal is
00:33:26
not a principle till it cost you money, right? So, I think those decisions where
00:33:31
you you if if if like firing somebody, right, if it's just like really obvious
00:33:38
and straightforward, then it's not pleasant um and it's emotionally can be
00:33:44
emotionally difficult, but you don't feel unduly exposed by it. But in [clears throat] my experience, that's
00:33:50
never the case, right? [laughter] That's almost never the case. it always feels
00:33:55
like a 5248 decision. >> Yeah. >> Um so I think that for me those are the
00:34:02
those are the really difficult ones. What I would say though is that nearly always once you've made that call it
00:34:11
feels like a weight is lifted. you know, it feels like like not necessarily because those problems
00:34:21
that you imagined aren't real, but [snorts] because it it frees you now to be able to begin to fix the things that
00:34:29
really matter to you. Um, it it's like almost like I think leadership really is
00:34:34
about taking control [snorts] or le but let me be clear what I mean by that. I don't mean that in a control freak way.
00:34:43
I mean, it's about understanding the things you can control because most of the things that affect our our lives and
00:34:51
our professional our personal lives, our professional lives, our businesses, most
00:34:55
of the things that affect them aren't in our control. So, if you're a CEO of a
00:34:59
business, most of the things that affect your business, you can't control. You
00:35:02
can't control the economy. You can't control what your competitors do. You
00:35:05
can't control geopolitics. I mean, the list is endless of the things you can't
00:35:08
control. The weather, right? If you sell ice cream and it's a rainy summer, right? there's nothing you can do about
00:35:12
it. What you have to do as a leader is understand the relatively small list of things that you can control and not
00:35:20
ignore the external factors. Of course, the external factors might determine the
00:35:24
decisions you take, but [snorts] you have to understand what's in your control and focus your energies and work
00:35:30
out how you're going to use those levers to get you to where you want to get to.
00:35:35
I I always imagine that that great leadership is the difference between a sailing ship and a cork. If you drop a
00:35:41
cork in an ocean, okay, it's the tides, the winds, and the currents determine
00:35:49
where that cork ends up. The cork has no control over its destiny. A sailing ship uses the tides and the
00:35:58
currents and the winds to get from where it wants to get to get from its start point to its end point. It doesn't go in
00:36:04
a straight line. It's not like a an ocean liner. It has to zigzag its way around, but with the right captain,
00:36:10
it'll get there. And I think that's what leadership is about. >> That's really interesting. I think
00:36:16
there's always a tension um in organizations, but I think that there's particularly
00:36:22
>> a tension in many organizations between long-term vision and quarterly results
00:36:29
or kind of short-term short-termism, let's call it that, >> because many investors want regular
00:36:37
updates on what's going on um and how things are progressing. And therefore it
00:36:42
does potentially force a CEO into a position where they're having to give either too frequent updates for what
00:36:49
they can actually helpfully add more value to the previous update they may have been a quarter ago. Uh how how do
00:36:57
CEOs look more to that longer term? You obviously had to do that with regards to
00:37:02
the turnaround because whilst there were probably short-term changes then were no
00:37:06
doubt changes that you wanted to do longer term but that was just further down the track. How do you manage to
00:37:12
balance that? >> So I think stakeholder management is really really important for for leaders.
00:37:18
Um and typically well for somebody like a CEO you're going to have I guess shareholders, customers and and
00:37:24
employees would be I mean maybe there's some others but that's a let's say
00:37:28
they're the big three. Y >> um and you have to take all three groups with you. You and that's why
00:37:35
communication is so important. >> You have to make sure in a sense that belief point we were talking about.
00:37:41
>> Yes. Though all three of those need to believe all of [snorts] your three
00:37:47
beliefs and if they really believe and the way and the way of course if you have like five quarters of terrible
00:37:55
results okay I mean belief is going belief is going to filter away but so but if they believe in where you're
00:38:06
trying to get to and if you do a good job of ensuring that they believe in how you're trying to get there and you do a
00:38:14
good job of of demonstrating to them at regular intervals that you are making some progress
00:38:23
against the towards those things they will cut you slack that you know I think I mean I'm generalizing I can't say how
00:38:31
every single investor and every single but that is my experience my experience is if you can demonstrate that you have
00:38:39
momentum and that you are moving enough of the key metrics in the right direction most of the time because
00:38:48
nobody nobody has as well obviously we've got these crazy huge monopoly businesses that you know the tech let's
00:38:55
put those aside but in real businesses very few people have brilliant quarters every quarter and everything goes in the
00:39:01
right direction but it's it's a I think ensuring that you have that level of
00:39:06
belief communication is the way you do that and [snorts] and you what people how you communicate often can be just as
00:39:17
important as what you communicate. Most business communication is just terrible.
00:39:24
>> Okay? And people obiscate uh because they they worry. They think, "Oh, well,
00:39:29
you know, we haven't moved all the needles in the right direction and we haven't, you know, you know, there are
00:39:35
some bits that we'd like to hide and all this kind of stuff." Like this is real
00:39:38
world CEO, right? because it's always this feels like it always feels like you're drinking from this fire hydrant.
00:39:44
And you know, I think great communication is concise, precise, and clear. Precise, concise, clear. And the more
00:39:54
precise and the more concise and the more clear you can be, the more people trust what you say. And yet, so often in
00:40:01
business communication, people do the opposite. you know, they they they use jargon and just and long
00:40:08
sentences because they want to try and and it gives you even if they're not doing it for this reason, it looks like
00:40:13
you're trying to hide something. >> Yeah. >> It looks like baffles brains.
00:40:18
And so, and it requires a degree of confidence, I think, to be able to say maybe everything hasn't gone exactly how
00:40:24
we'd like it to, but but one of the ways you get people to trust you is by doing
00:40:31
that. No, of but I mean of course you also need to demonstrate that some things are going in the right direction
00:40:38
of course. >> Um but but but I I think that that being good at communicating is critical to
00:40:45
keeping your stakeholders on board on side and um actually interestingly I think one of the groups of stakeholders
00:40:52
that many CEOs don't spend enough time on is their employees. you know that because they they they're
00:41:00
so conscious of these these let's say call them external pressures whether it
00:41:03
be investors and and customers they feel these are the people that can fire me you know in crude terms um but actually
00:41:11
the people that are going to get them over the line is the third group their employees
00:41:18
>> yeah that's true and I guess a little bit to your kind of head of culture type
00:41:22
job when you have HR that doesn't necessarily mean that you delegate whole responsibility for employees to somebody
00:41:29
else. >> You I mean I I I had a CEO that worked for me. Um and I said to him, "So who
00:41:39
are your 20 most who are your the 20 key people in your business?" Um and he
00:41:45
said, "I'll get back to you that I'm going to go and talk to HR." And I was
00:41:48
like, [laughter] "Are you got to be kidding me?" [laughter] Um I think having a good HR partner is
00:41:57
great. >> Yes. >> Okay. That it's great but they are not responsible for culture. They are not
00:42:05
responsible for uh people. Uh people work for you. Uh in the same way that you know having a CMO or a head of
00:42:12
growth. Okay that's a critical role but ultimately as a CEO the you're responsible for growth. Let's be clear.
00:42:20
I mean in virtually every business growth is the metric and what you're there to do is to deliver growth. That's
00:42:28
your job and then you have people around you of course that are experts in particular aspects of that. So not
00:42:34
nothing against having a chief growth officer or whatever as long as that doesn't mean that you forget that
00:42:39
actually that's you that's your job in the same way that you could I mean I
00:42:44
wouldn't ever have somebody called head of culture but but you cannot forget
00:42:47
that culture is you >> can't it definitely something that many CEOs that I've seen have like like you
00:42:59
kind of said at the beginning diverted away from or kind of said this is too big for me to deal with. Therefore, I'm
00:43:05
just going to opt out. >> Well, I think there's there's what I think of as the leadership industrial
00:43:10
complex. Okay? And the leadership industrial complex makes a lot of money from u making leadership
00:43:18
uh seem like really complicated [laughter] uh you know and and guess what they've got the answer. It's
00:43:25
complicated, but hey, come to us. We've got the answer. And leadership isn't.
00:43:28
It's difficult. There's no question about that. But it's not complicated.
00:43:32
And I think the same applies to culture. Like I said earlier, very often you have
00:43:37
lots and lots of people making lots of money out of the culture industry. And what they do is they come into an
00:43:42
organization and say, "Well, okay, I'm going to come on and do six months of
00:43:44
consultancy with you and we're going to do loads of all this stuff, whatever it
00:43:47
is, and then we're going to come up with a culture, you know, culture for you."
00:43:51
This is total Every great culture has basically the same characteristics. There are
00:44:00
thousands of ways of doing it wrong. But there's a relatively small number of
00:44:05
characteristics of great cultures. You know, their trust, it's support, it's
00:44:09
great communication, it's autonomy. Not going to exhaust this, but if you just start with those four, okay, you're
00:44:17
you're going to be way ahead of most. What's difficult, as we keep coming back
00:44:22
to in this conversation, is how do Okay, great. I buy that. But but you've got
00:44:26
those four to start with. You don't need to spend three months coming up with
00:44:30
those words. That's what we're aiming towards. Okay. Now, we might need to
00:44:34
spend some time working at how we're going to take our organization and really make those a reality in in our
00:44:40
organization. But that is ultimately that has to be something that the CEO owns >> because it's it's it's it can't culture
00:44:50
isn't something you write on PowerPoint slides and put on the website. That's why
00:44:56
the logic the the logic behind our madness of saying we are going to just pull apart how and where everybody sits
00:45:01
in this organization is because we wanted to create space for new behaviors ultimately. Um and even though the way
00:45:08
I'm describing it to you is now is the benefit with of hindsight. I think instinctively that's what we were
00:45:16
working towards. It changes an organization, a culture, but as you say, leadership can change it overnight.
00:45:23
>> It can. It really can. But it but it it it is difficult to do because it it
00:45:29
means that not just the CEO, but the CEO's leadership team and then not the the then each of them have their own
00:45:35
departments and their own people that work for them. It requires all of those people to
00:45:42
think about their behaviors and how they run their teams. And you can't you literally cannot change a culture
00:45:50
without changing the behaviors of the people that run it. You you literally cannot do it. You might say, "Well, we
00:45:57
don't want to change our behaviors because we think they're just fine as
00:46:00
they are." I I'm not here to tell you they're not, but I'm telling you, your
00:46:04
culture won't change if you don't. and you've led teams through layoffs, restructuring,
00:46:11
um industry upheaval, yet you've always seemingly um maintained your optimism. How do you
00:46:18
maintain that optimism through those kind of difficult times as a CEO? >> I mean, there were times [laughter]
00:46:27
times when it was pretty bloody difficult to maintain my optimism. I could tell you I um so I stood up in
00:46:34
front of the company as the CEO. I thought to myself, really, this sounds a slightly mad thing to say, but it
00:46:42
wasn't until that point that I stood up and asked myself this question, which
00:46:46
was we're not in denial about about the state of our business. Fine. Some businesses are, by the way, but we
00:46:55
weren't. But the key question is why? Why is our business a crappy business where you know we all know our
00:47:06
competitors, every business is only too familiar with its competitors and every business in every sector will be able on
00:47:14
a fairly informal basis maybe will be able to tell you who the great businesses are in that sector. Of course
00:47:20
most by definition are average. It's the definition of average and there's going
00:47:25
to be some struggling ones. >> Yep. in every sector and we were definitely in the struggling
00:47:31
end. Why? Why is there another another agency 300 yards down the street that's
00:47:39
a great business? What have they got that we haven't got? Because they're
00:47:45
just a building with people in it. We are just a building with people in it. They don't own their building. We don't
00:47:51
own our building. We don't own any IP. There's nothing other than a load of people that walk
00:47:57
through the door every day. And that applies to a lot of businesses. >> Definitely
00:48:04
>> right. A lot. I mean, there are some that own IP and things like that, but
00:48:08
even those that do, their competitors own IP, too. So, you know, it it's and
00:48:13
[snorts] the only answer I ever came up to with that question was talent and culture.
00:48:19
Okay. Now, I always found this in answer to your optimism question both intimidating and liberating because it's
00:48:30
kind of intimidating because you think, well, I actually haven't got there's not
00:48:34
many levers to pull here. >> Yes. >> But at the same time, none of the
00:48:39
businesses that are doing great have really got anything that we can't have >> if we put our minds to it.
00:48:46
>> Yeah. and we work hard enough and we keep trying and we keep trying and
00:48:49
failing and zigzagging around and maybe we need to change some people and maybe we need to try different ways of
00:48:54
creating the culture we want but there's nothing in innate that's stopping us
00:48:59
getting there and and that's I think that's ultimately the thing that kept me
00:49:05
optimistic the the other answer to that question is that there's a little bit
00:49:11
that I didn't tell you in the interest of time but in the middle of this this
00:49:16
uh this kind of difficult part of my career. I went and did the advanced management program at Harvard.
00:49:22
Um, and that's a that that really changed my life. That did. Um, but one of the things that we did on that was we
00:49:30
studied successful leaders. uh you know um I mean it was quite a long time ago now. So, we'd
00:49:36
probably look at different people now, but whoever that was, you know, um Carlos Goon hilariously before he uh got
00:49:43
arrested in Japan and fled to Lebanon and uh and uh Meg Whitman at eBay and all and Jack Welsh at General Electric
00:49:52
and people like this, you know, these real these really mega CEOs who'd run huge businesses and
00:50:01
achieved remarkable things. And one of the things that I came back to our piddly little 200 person at the
00:50:11
time business um that had been struggling and bumbling along and I thought I reckon these guys
00:50:20
they'd fix this in an afternoon. I mean what are we [laughter] playing at? you know, Carlos go, you know,
00:50:28
transforms Renault Nissan in in in about 3 months or I mean, I'm exaggerating,
00:50:34
but there's the scale of the change and the pace of the change that these people
00:50:38
achieved was remarkable and and I found that I found that quite liberating. Now,
00:50:43
by the way, I actually don't know whether they would fix it enough because make things being smaller does not
00:50:48
necessarily make them easier. Let's be clear about that. That is true. [snorts]
00:50:51
But but nevertheless, I did find it inspiring that that that to look at the these gargantuan tasks
00:51:02
that that just regular people like you and me, >> I suppose to an extent, had taken on and
00:51:07
achieved. And therefore, I thought, well, we must be out 200 of us. We must be able to do something, mustn't we?
00:51:13
>> So, yeah, >> that's great. Thank you very much. And thank you for joining me.
00:51:18
>> Thanks for having me. That was great. really enjoyed it. >> So I think there were a number of
00:51:23
aspects [music] that were really interesting with the conversation with Chris today. One of
00:51:29
them related to [music] the CEO being the driver of culture. He spoke quite a bit about um people being hired as a
00:51:37
head of culture and said that whoever gets hired into that type of a position, it doesn't discharge the responsibility
00:51:43
that the CEO has to manage that [music] culture within an organization and that's where it should start. He also
00:51:49
talks about leaders and the fact that leaders can be at all levels of an organization. Those leaders [music] help
00:51:54
to bring that message of culture to other teams. He also [music] talks about difficult decisions and he says that
00:52:03
those are the ones related to people which I can absolutely personally agree with. Uh they are the human ones. um
00:52:11
[music] the changes, the challenges um particularly if you're in a process of
00:52:16
removing some from the company, whether [music] that's firing, making them redundant. It's that human challenge
00:52:22
that can be really difficult as a CEO to manage and sometimes quite isolating. And the other point that I think is
00:52:29
important to bring out is the communication piece. So he talks [music] about what you communicate, but he also
00:52:36
talks about how you communicate. And that how is really important to make sure that the message gets across in a
00:52:42
way that people will appreciate, they will understand, and they will continue to believe in the vision and the mission
00:52:48
that you have as an organization. That's it for this episode of Grit in the Boardroom. Thanks to Chris for sharing
00:52:53
his story with honesty and insight, and thank you for listening. Until next [music] time, stay thoughtful, stay
00:52:59
brave, and stay in the room.