Shownotes

I recently spoke with Kirsty Leighton Founder and Managing Partner of award winning consultancy Milk & Honey PR, the highest scoring B Corp global communications agency in the world. As someone who speaks so much about purpose, it is always a great learning opportunity for me to engage with people/founders who believe in the power of purpose. 

In this freewheeling chat with Kirsty Leighton we spoke about the meaning of purpose and how it manifests itself in business conduct, engagement with stakeholders and sustainable practices. We also spoke about bravery, setting up a business in her mid-40s, building an agency that behaved differently 👇🏾👇🏾

👉🏾 The Elephant in the Room for the industry - poor diversity and social mobility

👉🏾 Addressing challenges facing the industry including the disruptions around new technology, upskilling the talent pool and also changing the traditional agency model

👉🏾 What comms professionals can do to maintain their seat at the table

👉🏾 The drivers for transitioning from LLP to an employee ownership trust

👉🏾 B-Corp certification, as a path to betterment, external validation and respect

👉🏾 What leaders are doing to prepare for the future of work - including dealing with hybrid, new technology, mental health, work life balance etc….

And much more. 

Link to the podcast episode in comments 👇🏾👇🏾

Episode Transcript

Sudha: Good afternoon, Kirsty. Thank you for being a guest on The Elephant in the Room podcast today. 

Kirsty: Lovely to be invited. Thank you so much. 

Sudha: Okay, so let's jump right in. Give us a quick introduction to who you are and what you do. 

Kirsty: So my name is Kirsty Leighton. I am the founder and I've given myself the very exalted title of Group CEO of Milk and Honey PR. An organisation that I set up six and a half years ago. So six and a half years ago, with just me, with my almost 30 years experience now we've been able to grow that from just me in six years to now 50 people in three continents and four offices. 

Sudha: Wow. That's amazing. So when and why did you decide to launch your own consultancy? Did you have an aha moment? I know that women are fairly risk averse and often when they take that first step, it's because they're not satisfied with what is happening in the workplace, or there's some sense of dissatisfaction. 

Kirsty: Well, that was absolutely the case. I was incredibly fortunate that in the last 25 years prior to starting Milk and Honey, I had worked for some amazing, always PR agencies. So I'd always been on the agency side. And I'd learned an awful lot during that time. I got the opportunity to work in lots of different types of PR, but what I found is that sometimes the intention of what an organisation's policy was looking to achieve was perhaps slightly missed in practice.

Kirsty: And there was just these little niggly bits where I could see what the intention was, but the practical delivery wasn't quite delivering it. So my last role, which was at Hudson Sandler before I'd set up Milk and Honey, they were actually coming out, they were doing a management buyout from Huntsworth, and I just thought actually, do you know what? Do I really want to wed my future to this organisation as brilliant as it was? I was there as MD for five years and thoroughly enjoyed it. I thought, actually, do you know what now is the time, if I'm going to do something on my own, to do it. 

Kirsty: But, talking about bravery and women wanting to do something in perhaps later life, for me I was in my mid forties when I set up Milk and Honey. And both my parents used to actually run their own businesses and both of them were incredibly intelligent and incredibly hardworking, but they, bless them, did not have an ounce of commerciality between the pair of them. So every couple of years we moved to a slightly smaller house. So I was always terrified of running my own deal and being responsible for paying other people's rent and mortgages.

Kirsty: So I put it off and put it off. But during my career, I was given plenty of opportunity by my leads, very often female leads actually, that allowed me to open new divisions, open new entities, open new countries. And so I then had the practical experience and probably more importantly, the confidence to be able to do it myself.

Sudha: Yeah, think that's so important. And that's very interesting actually, that you speak about your parents and them running their own businesses. And I think sometimes that would make you very risk averse. I've seen some people who've been, I think, put off because they've not seen their parents have success or it defined in the parameters of success that we have today but very interesting to hear that. So, Kirsty, we live in a world where purpose has become such a buzzword, especially in the last two or three years post pandemic. How integral are values and purpose to how you run your business? 

Kirsty: So it's been the story, been the platform from which I've built the business. So when I started Milk and Honey, I wanted to create an agency that behaved a little bit differently. I wanted to create an agency that didn't sell hours, but instead was able to sell ideas, work on strategy and be a real partner. I wanted to only work with organisations that, had a positive impact on people and planet.

Kirsty: And so therefore be quite picky from that perspective. I wanted to work with organisations that were ambitious. Now I would imagine most organisations like to call themselves ambitious, but I wanted to work with organisations that were going somewhere, because that way around it allowed both myself, selfishly, and the team that I was building around me to be able to continue to learn and to progress.

Kirsty: And I wanted to create an organisation that could demonstrate its values and bring them to life. So for us, there were five founding values. The first was around bravery, let's not ever be afraid to try something and just because it doesn't work, you never lose, right? You either win or you learn. And so I think from that perspective, that was important to us. Energy, I am one of these types of people, my husband always says that I have no dial, I'm a switch, I'm either on and I'm full on or I'm off. And so for me being able to have lots of energy giving individuals around me was important.

Kirsty: Respect is hugely important, I think as a mother and as a wife and as somebody who plays a role in our community. I think, being respectful of all different types of backgrounds, ages, cultural sensitivities, neurodiverse sensitivities. Both my husband and both my sons are, neurodiverse.

Kirsty: And so I wanted to be able to create somewhere where people could be celebrated, not where they're tolerated, where different ideas and ways of thinking could come together and we could all respect one another. I then wanted to create somewhere where collaboration was really important, I think, especially in the type of organisation that I'm part of in terms of being a professional services consultancy, very often, some divisions come in when there are separate P& Ls. And so I've constructed an international business where actually everyone is paid from the top company. So therefore it's encouraging, everybody to work together, irrespective of which division or which country they sit in.

Kirsty: And then the last one was passion, let's make sure that nobody has to do anything that they're not excited about. Very often again in consultative roles you're not necessarily always given the choice as to what you're working on.

Kirsty: And I wanted to make sure that, nobody worked on more than five clients, that nobody worked on anything that they weren't passionate about. And so anyone can ask off any client at any time for any reason, in fact, they don't need a reason. And I think that was really important. So then as we started, I say we, it was only me at the time, as again, I came out with those founding values, then I started to think about some of the behaviours that would bring that to life. And then beyond that, as we've evolved, I've looked for external ways to prove that because clearly you cannot say about yourself that you are successful or that you are truly worthy or that you're respectful, you need other ways and means to, demonstrate and find that out. And during the last six years, we've been able to really evidence all of those pieces. 

Sudha: Yeah, Absolutely. What, according to you Kirsty, is the elephant in the room in our industry? 

Kirsty: Gosh, well, I think for me it's still just a lack of diversity. It's really interesting that when you look at the percentages of men that are running organisations versus the percentage of men that are in communications it's still wildly skewed. And I know that some of that is women have historically taken on primary carer roles and so have maybe left the workforce, but then let's get them back in again. These are amazing individuals that have got so much to share. Also, I think that historically, it's been a very white dominated industry, and that is more and more telling when you look at the availability of talent at different levels, and the more senior you're looking at, the less available talent in market there is.

Kirsty: So again, I think it's really interesting and appropriate that we look a little wider, that we don't just look in our own backyard in terms of of attracting new talent. So we look into journalism, we look into other forms of marketing, we look into other forms of management and strategy roles and try and invite people from that perspective. And then another area for me is more from a socio economic perspective. Very often people from a less advantaged background, don't necessarily know about communications as a career. And when they find out about it, they don't necessarily know how to get into it, what the access point is, and what their earning potential is.

Kirsty: And then when they get into it, studies from the likes of socially mobile, show that actually they don't progress as quickly. And so I think that's a confidence piece as well. So it's great to see these new programs coming in. That are directly tackling some of these barriers that still sadly exist in our industry.

Sudha: Absolutely. Diversity and social mobility, all these are big challenges in our industry. And considering that we are living in a world that is in a constant state of flux. I mean, the world has always been in a state of flux, but with social media and how connected we are, everything seems more immediate and everything is evolving around us. There are so many crises that we can see that touch each one of us and are touching our industry. So what do you think would be the three biggest challenges facing our industry today. 

Kirsty: I think you make a very good point around social media and I think the macro element there perhaps is around this idea of immediacy and response. And I think there's an opportunity for us to just be a little bit more considered. So if you break that down for me, that's two things there, the first of which is using technology, using AI to help make sure that we can separate the important from the critical and make sure that we know where we're putting our, human endeavours and our attention.

Kirsty: But then also, I think it's also about just helping people to build their own personal resilience. And so they don't feel this constant bombardment of information so that they can filter a little bit more. And I think actually as communicators that's rather our job as well to do some of that filtering and reframing. So I think that is definitely one side of things that like time management, information management. Then I think also there's, obviously in the last couple of years since we've moved more typically as employers and employees into a hybrid workplace, then that requires a different type of leadership style and it requires a different type of internal motivation for all of us.

Kirsty: So those of us that are more, extrovert get our energy from outside of ourselves and so not having other people around actually can be quite difficult, but those that are more introverted that get their energies internally. Obviously, that's quite a nice mix, but we still need to come together to balance one another out. The point of having diverse teams with people with different educational backgrounds, different cultural backgrounds, different academic backgrounds, is so that we can all learn from one another and if we're not, therefore, still working in a very intertwined manner, then we're not getting the full advantage of those diverse teams. But they don't have to always be in the same room, but I think that making the hybrid model work is another challenge that we're dealing with right now.

Sudha: Yeah. And do you think that this is just a supplementary thing that I'm thinking of is, do you think that you earlier spoke about the P& L model which puts a stress on this thing. Do you think that the agency model that has existed so far really needs to change in some way?

Kirsty: Oh, completely. I mean, it's already quite a lot of discussion in our own trade media at the moment where it's like, okay, those organisations that have been billing on hours, now the AI is coming into play and generative AI specifically, then how's that going to work , clients aren't going to pay in the same way.

Kirsty: So there needs to be a rethink there. I do also think that as agencies have evolved, especially more international agencies, then they may have numerous P&Ls. So not only would they have their own country P&Ls, they may well have sectoral or divisional P&Ls. And again, as we're moving towards more and more integrated comms and integrated marketing, that doesn't necessarily encourage those behaviours.

Kirsty: So again, back to the earlier point that I made around you can see what people are trying to do with some of the way that businesses have been set up, but actually the processes that they've put in place sometimes, cause them to trip up a little. And I think having multiple P& Ls is part of that problem.

Kirsty: So the way that we've got around that in Milk and Honey is we're actually an employee ownership trust. So I'm surrounded by my bosses every day, which is wonderful. keeps me grounded, keeps it real. But what's nice about that is that everybody after they've been with Milk and Honey for a year becomes a co owner in the business and their shares are held centrally in a trust.

Kirsty: And so they've been all benefit from profit share at the end of the financial year. So what happens there is that everybody owns everything. So the Singapore team doesn't just own Singapore, they own Singapore and Germany and UK and the US. So therefore we're always looking out for one another, we're always looking to put the most appropriate, best skilled and most motivated teams in place to deliver. But it also allows us to do truly joined up global work. So for us that's been something we've been quite purposeful in terms of putting that infrastructure in place.

Sudha: Yeah, that's very interesting, you've answered one of the questions I was going to ask you after on the drivers for Milk and Money moving from being an LLP to an employee ownership trust. And so clearly you are looking at the future and you've made this decision. 

Kirsty: Yes. So, when I set it up, obviously there was only me on my own I but knew that I wanted it to be a shared ownership organisation. And naively at the time, I thought, Ooh, the best way to do that as an LLP is a limited liability partnership. Quite a number of them exist within our industry. And they tend to work quite well. However, what we found there was that that's fine if you want to have a limited number of co owners in the business.

Kirsty: But if you're actually looking for much wider co ownership, that model isn't excellent. So it took us a couple of years to find the right model actually that for us being the EOT, so that's an employee ownership trust. It's something that only really truly exists in the UK. And it was only put in place in 2014.

Kirsty: So It's still relatively new. I think there's less than 750 companies in the UK that are EOTs. Although interesting to see that there's more and more PR agencies that are going that way. But what's nice about that is it's pretty much admin free. It's not free to set up though. I mean, for us, it was a true consideration.

Kirsty: It cost us about 80, 000 to change the legal structure. So it is something that you really need to think about. 

Sudha: But it was something that was aligned with your core values and purpose right from the start, you were on the journey and you came there. Moving from there during the pandemic, our industry , we got a seat at the table, so to speak and we were able to advise more CEOs and boards and they look towards us to show them the direction and show them the path and what could happen. So we took on roles as consultants and advisors, as trusted advisors.

Sudha: How do we ensure that we continue to have a seat at the table? Because that seems to be disappearing again. 

Kirsty: Well it's really interesting. So I started in a consumer environment, then went into tech, then into brand, then into digital, then into corporate then into financial and M&A. And what was really interesting about that is that throughout that journey, one of the pieces that I found out is that if you find yourself working into the CEO or through the CFO, then they see you as strategic advisors, they truly see you as strategic advisor. And as such, any change in strategic advice is sometimes seen externally as a bit of a wobble. Whereas if you go up through more the CMO, then they see it...