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Human Powered: High-performing agency & consultancy teams
Human Powered: High-performing agency & consultancy teams episodes
- Moving from a family culture to a performance-driven team culture - with Ian Finch
How do you create a performance culture whilst maintaining warmth and affection?
Ian Finch is founder and CEO of Mando Group, a digital consultancy that makes technology work for everyone. He’s been running the business for 27 years.
In this episode, Ian shares how he:- Moved away from decision-making led by informal watercooler moments to being highly metric-driven
- Uses the VMOST framework to cascade business goals into team, department and individual goals
- Profiled his superheroes internally and built out values and core competencies from their behaviour
- Realised that his workaholic tendencies and high expectations meant that his team couldn’t thrive
- Uses NLP coaching with his team so they come up with the answers themselves and get into a performance state
- Moved away from having a ‘duty obligation’ by realising that just because he can do something, it doesn't mean he should do it
Ian candidly shares the story of his major burnout and having to step away from running the business for 3 months. He gradually reintegrated and transformed his leadership style to become an enabler to his team.32 min - Using cognitive behavioural coaching so leaders and their businesses thrive - with Nikki Gatenby
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 grow
- Looks after people's wellbeing and avoids them burning out by regularly asking 4 simple questions
- Brings in backward reflection and retrospectives so teams always learn from their experiences
- Enables 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 other
Nikki talks openly about her 25-year career - including how she self-manages to prevent her two previous burnout events from ever happening again.34 min - Growing a global neurodiverse agency to 40 people in just 4 years - with Hannah Springett
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 possible
- Places authenticity at the heart of everything she does - including being open about her endeavours going wrong
- Has learnt to supercharge her empathy skills - especially to get the best out of introverts
- Values diversity and intentionally recruits globally to increase this even more
- Spends 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 goals
Hannah is deeply committed to changing the lives of each of her employees. She shares how she does this in our open and authentic conversation.37 min - Focusing on culture and diversity to grow to 300 people - with Tamara Littleton
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 objective
- Used 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 job
Tamara openly shares her 22-year journey from sole founder to handing over the running of the business and appointing two co-CEOs.32 min - Leading an agency group so everyone loves what they do - with Becky Simms
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 fit
- Uses a ‘Vivid Vision’ and working groups so everyone deeply buys into the company direction
- Brings their values to life with external speakers, including a Gold-winning Olympian
- Invested heavily in tech to make team meetings fully inclusive and engaging for remote participants
- Transitioned the agency to a flexible 4-day workweek - and has never looked back
Becky firmly believes that the leadership team sets the weather for the agency. This philosophy guides all her communications.36 min - Making a lasting difference to the way people live, work and grow - with Steven Writer-Maguire
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 enablement
- Set up a Team of Teams model where multi-disciplinary teams make decisions and collectively solve client problems by themselves
- Uses their monthly F**k Up Challenge so everyone can safely share mistakes and learnings
- Encourages people to act as business owners and make their own decisions about what’s best for the company
- Puts 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-making
Steven 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.32 min - Growing an agency for 12 consecutive years powered by happiness - with Jaye Cowle
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 clients
- Uses the 3 pillars of Autonomy, Mastery and Purpose to underpin team motivation
- Accepts that their happiness proposition can be off-putting... but it’s worth it so they don’t have a vanilla agency proposition
- Created a feedback culture where people can communicate how happy they are, share ideas and celebrate each other weekly
- Uses their values as a common shared language in recruitment, onboarding, personal development and celebrating successes
- Is shaping their client offerings around their values and happiness mantra, elevating them beyond their current service offering
Jaye 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.34 min - Running a group of agencies led by talent and fuelled by technology - with Kate Ross
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 technology
- Builds 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 do
- Challenges 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 them
- Has a robust 6-month probationary period to ensure new hires are a good fit
Kate also talks about how 3-year planning doesn’t work for them. Instead, they adopt the Kaizen philosophy of continuous process improvement.34 min - Enabling everyone to thrive in a fully remote agency - with Tim Cameron-Kitchen
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 for
- Leans fully towards abdication on the abdication-to-micromanagement spectrum
- Uses a lot of process so everyone operates autonomously against their frameworks
- Follows 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 year
Tim also talks about Wednesday Wins and Thankful Thursdays… and how he uses a kitten Giphy to keep everyone aligned around their shared vision!38 min - Striving to be the best search agency in the world - with Chris Ailey
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 world
- Hires people with the skills and characteristics they don’t already have
- Grants 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 same
- Enters lots of awards as a way of driving the team to maintain quality
Chris talks candidly about the ups and downs of life as an agency leader.32 min
About Human Powered: High-performing agency & consultancy teams
From the publisher's feed
Ready to build an agency or consultancy you’re proud of?
You’re in the right place.
In each episode, you’ll hear exclusive insights from agency and consultancy leaders who’ve built thriving businesses.
Discover how they create high-performing teams and build high-performing and sustainable businesses. You can implement their suggestions in your business and see real results.
Hosted by Trenton Moss, leadership coach, exited agency founder and author of the bestselling book, Human Powered.