Culture Revival: Igniting your Business’ Soul through Curiosity and Creativity

“Write down the challenge you’ve got and where you think you could get to, if you overcame that challenge. Write it into a story or a manifesto or something that shows you are in it for the change. Not just pointing out the bleeding obvious problem! And take it to the most senior leader you can find and read it out to them over that coffee”
Marcus Iles, Manifestive

In this episode you’ll hear about

The power of humility within the context of continuous learning
Open communication leading to foster innovation
Clear vision and how this will always fuel passion in your teams
If you embrace change, you embrace growth
Rewarding innovation, and encouraging risk-taking
How to lead authentically and build trust
Investing in employee engagement, to note only educate but inspire

We hope you enjoy the show!

Key links

Caractacus Potts – a cheeky reference I made about Marcus’ home office

Manifestive – Marcus’ strategy activation agency

About our guest

Our guest, Marcus Iles is a globally awarded Creative strategist. He has worked for many globally recognised brands – including HSBC, Renault, Nissan, Heineken, Microfocus, Pfizer and the Bank of England.

Before life in management consultancy, Marcus worked as a Global Executive Creative Director in advertising where he learned to harness the power of strategy and creativity to change beliefs, mindsets and behaviours. He now works as a consultant and is founder of the strategy catalyst, Manifestive.

About our host

Our host, Chris Hudson, is a Teacher, Experience Designer and Founder of business transformation coaching & consultancy Company Road.

Company Road was founded by Chris Hudson, who saw over-niching and specialisation within corporates as a significant barrier to change.

Every team approaches transformation in their own way, also bringing in their own partners to help. And while they’re working towards the same organisational goal, it’s this over-fragmentation that stunts rapid progress at a company-wide level.

Having worked as a marketer, transformation leader, teacher and practitioner of design thinking for over 20 years, both here in Australia and internationally, Chris brings a unique, deep and ‘blended’ skillset that will cohere and enable your teams to deliver ambitious and complex change programs.

Chris considers himself incredibly fortunate to have worked with some of the world’s most ambitious and successful companies, including Google, Mercedes-Benz, Accenture (Fjord) and Dulux, to name a small few. He continues to teach with Academy Xi in CX, Product Management, Design Thinking and Service Design and mentors many business leaders internationally.

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Transcript

Chris Hudson: [00:00:00] So what can we all learn from advertising agencies and management consultancies? We know they hire some of the smartest people. They work incredibly hard, and it’s not for everyone. These dedicated people who make ads, websites, content strategies, loads of things. These are some of the most entrepreneurial and resilient people you’re likely to meet.

We know they change other businesses, but what’s driving them? How do they positively build their own cultures? In episode two of the Company Road podcast, I’d love you to meet my old mate, Marcus Iles. Fellow Brit Marcus is a globally awarded creative strategist. He’s worked for many globally recognised brands, including HSBC, Renault, Nissan, Heineken, Pfizer, Bank of England, and a tonne more before life in management consultancy.

Marcus worked as a global executive creative director in advertising where he learned to harness the power of strategy and creativity to change beliefs, mindsets, and behaviours. He now works as a consultant and is founder of Strategy Catalyst [00:01:00] Manifestive. Marcus and I go back many years actually, since I first started out in my career.

We worked together in one of London’s finest integrated marketing agencies back in the heyday. It was so good to catch up with him as we both started and ended up in the same place. We’re both now in the business of organisational design and accelerating business change. He’s a passionate and an expressive soul.

He’s a brilliant writer, and you’ll know this from his diction and his turn of phrase. He’s a great thinker and actually a bit of a provocateur, true creative in that sense. See, as you’d expect, each of my questions may have sparked to quit a tangent or a giggle. At the very least. In this episode, we take a fresh look on working life and the dynamics of coming to grips with oneself.

We explore what it means to let curiosity run wild in an organisation, be that in a large, small, or a startup business. This was quite a philosophical chat in the end, so I’m excited about sharing a bit of a brain warmer this Wednesday. Oh, and one other thing. When we first hit record, we got chatting about the jingle from the show.

Marcus was keen to start the session with a short serenade of the podcast intro [00:02:00] music, something to get him in the mood, you know. True fact. The jingle is actually my attempt to break away from stock audio clips, and it’s the Intro to Late Shadows, which is a song that I recently wrote. Perhaps that’s a story for another day.

Anyway, I didn’t grant Marcus the song request, but he was fine without it. So enjoy this week’s show. You’re in for a treat.

Marcus Iles: Mate, I need to hear it just to set the scene.

Chris Hudson: What before we start?

Marcus Iles: Don’t you think just so I can get into the zone?

No, I’m joking, sorry, let’s get serious

Chris Hudson: I’d have to open up my GarageBand!

Marcus Iles: I thought I could get a live version.

Chris Hudson: Oh, alright. Gimme a minute. Gimme a minute. I’ll get the instruments, shall I?!,

Marcus Iles: I’ve got drum around the back here somewhere. We could just jam mate. That can be your session,

Chris Hudson: We’ll do that at the end. We’ll see if we get through. Okay. Okay. Yeah. Alright. Marcus, welcome and thank you very much for joining us on the Company Road Podcast. Delighted to have you on the show. [00:03:00] It’s, and it’s an honour.

You’re joining from the UK countryside somewhere in what looks like Caractacus Potts’ shed! But maybe just tell us a bit about where you are and where you’re situated.

Marcus Iles: Geographically, I’m in the West Midlands of the United Kingdom. For those of you that know it, think Birmingham left a bit.

There’s some pretty hills called the Malverns I’m out that way. And then I’m situated in what used to be a log store that’s attached to the side of the house. I’ve claimed it as my little office, and it’s a little den so I can psychologically leave the house, shut the door behind me, move into a space and just crack on with work.

But yeah it’s basically a home for all of my mental shenanigans. It’s messy and cluttered and full of rubbish. Much like my brain. I love it.

Chris Hudson: it’s brilliant. It’s much better than my background and I need to do mine next. I think. Can you come over and do it next time you’re in Australia?

Marcus Iles: I’ll do a screen grab of and you can just do it as a teams thing.

Chris Hudson: Easy. Yeah. Perfect. [00:04:00] So let’s introduce you. If we can tell us a bit about yourself. For those of you who don’t know you. How do people describe you?

Marcus Iles: How do people describe me? Hopefully they describe me as a fairly energetic, creative person.

I guess background wise, I’ve spent most of my career working as a creative in the communications, typically advertising type setting up to three or four years ago where I left for various reasons I’m sure we’ll get into later. And went into the world of management consultancy where I’ve existed ever since and thoroughly enjoyed it.

So I’m a kind of weird blend of strategy, creativity, and management consultancy.

Chris Hudson: And in this show we, we talk a lot about intrapreneurs and thinking about how within an organisation you’re able to affect change in one way or another. Tell us a bit about your own slant on that.

Do you relate to being an intrapreneur? Have you thought about it before? What are your thoughts there?

Marcus Iles: I love the phrase, I really [00:05:00] do. I think, part of the proposition that I’ve got for my own clients now is to try and inspire and raise intrapreneurs up within any organisation I work with which is why this chat is so appealing to me for myself, I think.

A lot of my career was as I’ve already said, sort was based in a very creative role in a setting that didn’t really allow for that sense of intrapreneurial mindset or application. It was very much a you sit in a box, you’re a creative if you go off and do that, which I always found to be a massive irony.

So yeah, I think that whole opportunity for organisations to not just spot people who have that lateral thinking, that opportunity to solve problems differently, that opportunity and talent to be able to inspire others, but, spot them, but then celebrate [00:06:00] them, raise them up, make them a real force for good within an organisation.

I think it’s it’s the way business has to go.

Chris Hudson: And you were describing creativity being shut off from other parts of the organisation just before. Tell us a bit about that. Do you think that’s how, you were saying that’s how it shouldn’t work but why is that?

Marcus Iles: It’s a really weird one.

Creativity as a title, it’s a really onerous title. I think as a creative agency you have that as your badge of honour. So I guess as a client, you’re expecting the whole business to be creative and inspirational and have an ability to innovate and think differently. But inside creative agencies, for most of my career anyway, I’m sure things are changing.

There was a sense of how do we productise and create a production line for this weird and wonderful science of creativity. And in the [00:07:00] beginning, when I first started out, that was done through sycophancy. The creatives were in a nice bubble up in an ivory tower somewhere. And, you had to knock on the door very lightly and ask permission, which wasn’t particularly good, healthy or fulfilling for anybody, I don’t think.

But in the sort of flat lining of that hierarchy, there was still that component creatives just set over there. You don’t really need to talk to ’em about business per se. They just need to come up with an idea. Don’t talk to them about what the, the client actually thinks or feels or how his people are or her people are actually engaging with that product on the shop floor or in the factory.

Just come up with an idea and I always felt like that was a real shame. Like I was quite interested in the business. I was quite interested in whether people cared inside the organisation. So yeah, I can see the reason why I think it was done with the best intent. Let’s just let creatives do creativity.

But I think it ended up just being to the [00:08:00] detriment of creativity. I don’t think you can have the very best ideas unless you’ve got that fully rounded perspective.

Chris Hudson: And when you were eventually let off the floor and you were able to go and see the clients what was your first impression?

How do you remember that?

Marcus Iles: I guess by, this is probably gonna sound like I need a small violin, but by the time I’d got to any level of seniority, I felt a little bit like I’d missed the boat for creativity, the value being appended to creativity. It was like a necessary evil. By the time I was talking CMOs, they were very good, very well intentioned CMOs.

I was really lucky to do some really exciting campaigns and all that sort of stuff. But across the board there was just a feeling of tiredness, exhaustion, a kind of , let’s not rock the boat. I wanna get my 0.5% incremental growth. Don’t wanna lose my budget. So yeah, I like it. I like that idea, the really big scary one.

But I’m definitely going with option three [00:09:00] cause it’s just safer and we all know where we’re at and I can plug in optimisation here. I’ve got creative production and technology there. It gets localised. Everyone’s a winner. I don’t remember any explicit conversations with my clients where they said as such, it was more like a feeling of frustration, malaise maybe, where people were just like look, we again, like quite a productised attitude to creativity, idea slots in here, optimised technology, applied, distribution sits here. We make sure that we’ve got our year on growth. Everyone’s a winner. And again, I guess trying to tap on the door at that stage to say clients.

Yeah, but what do your people think? Why are you different from your own point of view? Felt like a little bit too little, too late in terms of my own role at that time. So hence the move to management consultancy, really.

Chris Hudson: And just thinking about that transition, it feels like we were talking about [00:10:00] intrapreneurs before.

Do you feel like within an advertising agency, you can be an intrapreneur. Do you feel like it was easier to do once you’d split and gone into management consultancy and actually you were living within another company’s culture?

Marcus Iles: For me personally, absolutely. It was easier.

But I guess that’s at least partially to do with my own attitude to authority, structure and, wanting to make an impact. And I think this is where running my own business is the best thing for me. And it does create a bit of a lens by which I see the industry. So I look at the creatives who I still know and love within advertising, and I, my heart aches for them.

I want them to be able to change things. I want ’em to be able to use that talent for much more than just, And I say that with massive respect to advertising, but I want ’em to be able to do that for much more than advertising. So I don’t think it’s easy. I think advertising has always had the problem of value.

How do you [00:11:00] append a value to an idea? And I, again, I totally understand why it’s got to the stage that it’s got to. But I also understand a client’s mentality. If they’ve got two choices, one is a much more binary. I know I’m gonna get eyeballs, clicks, some kind of return that’s measurable, even if it’s quite small, through this kind of application of optimisation and just whatever channel mix that I’m being sold by my media agency or an entirely new idea.

I’m not sure that I would put my budget on the latter. I would love to slate advertising for being really rubbish at looking after creatives, if I’m honest. But I don’t think I can do that. I think there’s a really huge amount of good intent and actually a really good understanding of where clients’ pain points are.

They want reassurance in a world where creativity in itself isn’t particularly reassuring. Creativity is by its nature, [00:12:00] pretty scary. So it’s a really difficult thing to sell.

Chris Hudson: Absolutely. And just thinking about your journey, you’ve been in it for a little while before you decided to make the transition.

You were in advertising agencies predominantly. Tell us about the change that you saw during that time and your license to affect change where possible and to manoeuvre. Do you feel like that changed over time?

Marcus Iles: I think it only changed. According to how open my bosses were, like in my first proper, what I’d call proper agency was below the line, but did a really good job of integrating digital and what was then direct marketing, typically mail. And myself and my art director were right at the heart of that.

Let’s stop talking about digital. Stop talking about DM. Let’s talk about creative department. And part of that strategy, which I’d like to think I, I totally supported for our ECD was. Breaking out of the little rooms of copywriter and art director that [00:13:00] ivory Tower I was talking about, which was really held and owned by the DM boys and girls, and making it much more open plan, much more fluid.

We broke up teams and digital creatives work with offline creatives, and I think the product was a lot richer for it. So yeah and I was very vocal in supporting that and, trying to be part of it. Was it the right thing to do? Who knows? But I think that sense of it can’t just carry on being the same.

And I get that is the nature of change for me. If we’re not, then there’s a degree of fear that I personally have that if you’re stagnating, you’re effectively dying. I guess I’ve always gravitated towards leaders who are open to that way of looking. That’s how I am and I look for people who will lead in that way, if that makes sense. Going out of that agency and going into more above the line advertising, it was much harder actually. It was [00:14:00] much more, advertising agencies have led the charge in ideas and creativity for 70 years or whatever it is. So this is it, this is how it works.

Creatives have this remit, this kudos. So that was a lot harder. But my strategy for that was just to we had a phrase to wear our shoe leather. I’d just go and talk to people and say, maybe you could help with this, or, Can I help with that? And just see what happened. And again, reasonably successful approach, I think, but it was an institutional change.

Chris Hudson: Tell us a bit about your view on authority in that respect. You mentioned it briefly before, how do you work well with authority and with your leadership and, from an intrapreneurship point of view how do you get that formula right?

Marcus Iles: Oh, I dunno that I’ve ever got it right.

I cut my teeth outside of creative, I worked for a client and I, even then, even as a 20 something year old, I would naturally go to the [00:15:00] leader and say, hi, I’m Marcus. How are you? Which is quite a surprise to most of the early leaders that I had.

But I think that was always my, I just wanted to know how the business was, who, the people were, who were running it. So I think that the resistance to that relational approach I’ve always been able to spot a mile off, and that’s always made me just think, oh this is an authority for its own sake, and that turns me off completely.

So any leader who’s yeah, nice to meet you, but back in your box I have a knee jerk response to a, not a good one. But that’s not their fault, again, I sit on the fence, but I can see that lots of leaders or leaders that I’ve had, have probably gone. I just haven’t got the bloody time to meet everybody and who is this Marcus kid, F-off, get back to your desk and earn me some more money or whatever.

So I get it, but I think the more that I’ve seen business transition out of this, autocracy, lead by command way of running a business, the more I [00:16:00] feel justified in always having had that approach. Like I’ve always wanted to have an opinion that has been heard by as senior a person as possible.

And if I don’t get that, then I just feel you’re just trying to boss me around for the sake of it. I’m just a nightmare to have as an employee. This is not the best pitch I’ve ever, for getting another full-time job is, it

Chris Hudson: doesn’t sound like you’ll need to.

Marcus Iles: I hope not.

Chris Hudson: But thinking about people starting out, and maybe some of the characteristics or the attributes that you were just describing. Would you go out the same way, would you say, suss out your leadership, find out what they’re all about build rapport with them, understand what the business is all about?

What would you say to people coming into the industry now?

Marcus Iles: I’d a hundred billion percent. I’d recommend that even to people who would find that really far too cocky and what you’re talking about, man, you’d get sacked in five minutes. I think, we spend an inordinate amount of time working for other people, obviously to justify our own salaries and [00:17:00] lifestyles and so on.

But you’ve really gotta believe in it. I think to really enjoy it and to get the satisfaction of a hard day’s work, you’ve really gotta believe that you’re doing something that matters. And the only way to really understand whether that’s true or not, is to talk to the people who are making the decisions, and I think get a feel for how they are as human beings matters a lot. It really does. I’ve worked in organisations where that sense of the commoditisation of staff is palpable and that’s given me total license to say thanks, but no thanks, I’m off. And we are breaking down barriers.

I think we do. We are in a working environment that typically is a lot more open, asks for a lot more, and gives a lot more communication to its people if it’s heading in the right way, in my opinion. But it’s still very easy for leadership to sit behind an office or behind a language of, profit and loss or EBITDA or whatever it is that’s really [00:18:00] inaccessible.

And and that makes the believability of what they’re trying to do really hard for people who are starting out. I’d always recommend if it’s not built into your onboarding, you grab as high a leader as you can. You think you can get away with and buy ’em a coffee and have half hour find out what their lives are like, find out what they’re passionate about, find out how they deal with people.

Chris Hudson: So you’re interviewing them. Is that your approach?

Marcus Iles: Maybe not an interview. I think you’ve got to get some gauge of trust. You’ve got to get some gauge of,

as a layer on top of what the organisation’s vision and mission is. Does this woman have what it takes to really evoke it from me as a human being? Am I gonna work that longer day or. Am I gonna be happy that I’ve made them better off while still collecting the same salary is, all of that sort of stuff.

Is this person adding that human layer to that corporate vision and [00:19:00] mission? I guess because, business isn’t easy. We have to get people to work hard and in the most obscure ways these days. Remote working is a classic point. How do you get people to give over and above when you, they’re not always in front of you.

You don’t really understand where and what shape your organisation is anymore. It’s incredibly difficult. So I think as employees, it’s our obligation to work out whether the people, bit of it fits with the corporate bit of it

Chris Hudson: Just thinking about when you’re in an organisation maybe one that you started in fairly recently and thinking back, what are some of the signs of you thinking, okay this is a place where I can work.

What characterises a healthy and thriving working culture in your view?

Marcus Iles: The last full-time job I had before setting up my own thing. It was absolutely as close to perfection as I’ve ever had in my career. Hence joining. Really. But I think that the character traits weren’t, I dunno how listable they are, but there was that real [00:20:00] palpable sense of an integration between what the people said and how they acted and what you read on the website.

The, this is what we’re doing as a business, we’re, and it’s really great. We’re the best in the world. Yeah. Whatever. And then people who were living and breathing that passion not just for authenticity and credibility. And yes, we can do what we say we can, but the impact, we really can change organisations for the better. And plus they’ve represented what I believe every business needs, which is the total synergy between creativity and strategy. But it’s people I genuinely think you will look at a job and get inspired by a job board or a job description, but you’ll always join for the people that you meet as part of the process, won’t you?

The more interesting thing, I think is situations where you get that sense of tingle, wow, this is totally me, this could be home. And then, you turn up to something that’s [00:21:00] totally, wow, this isn’t what I signed up for. Which is a kind of off topic chat, but that’s something that I’ve experienced.

I know plenty of people who have as well, and I find that just as interesting actually, where you can put on the veneer as an employer. And they go, brilliant, we’ve got ’em in. See ya. And just leg it, and leave them to their own devices.

Chris Hudson: There’s a lot of trickery or, I dunno if it’s trickery, but there’s a lot of representation online that gives you a certain impression, obviously. And you can try and find out, you can go on to Glassdoor and to other places, you don’t know really until you get there necessarily.

Even if the interview process is very long, you’ve been through multiple rounds in a presentation and you’ve met everyone at drinks and whatever it is. But when you turn up and you see that and you’ve gotta figure out, okay, do I stay and make something of it or do I need to head on and do something else? Then how do you respond in that situation?

Marcus Iles: As a professional supplier of services that I would like to think seek to help clients overcome that schizophrenia, I could put that lens on, which is that, onboarding for new [00:22:00] employees is such a crucial representation of how your business’s passion and vision meets with the actual experience.

The lived experience of people coming into the business is such an important opportunity to gauge whether there are any differences. This is what we believe, this is our purpose, this is what we’re gonna set out to do for the world. And then somebody comes in and hates it. Then there’s something that needs to be done by leadership, by middle management, and by the organisation as a whole to rectify that chasm, to bring that gap together.

But as an employee. It would be easy for me to say as an observer, but my advice to anybody would be find that most senior person that you can get hold of for a coffee and be really honest because they have to know, like if there’s that kind of fracture and it happens far too regularly, ultimately that will be shown in the company’s performance.

That will have a direct impact on the bottom line. So it’s whilst you’re in employment, even if it’s [00:23:00] only for that day before you pack your bag and never see them again, you’ve got an obligation to say, guys, this is a problem. You are not going to produce at your optimum if people are coming into an office and feeling this way.

This is possibly why I’ve ended up where I am now, cuz that ability to be able to have a voice about the things that are wrong, as well as the things that are going well is just so important in today’s business. It really is.

Chris Hudson: It strikes me as being quite instinctive in that you’ve read about what you think you’re gonna get when you turn up, and it’s either feeling right or it’s not relative to your preconception, or you wanna have that validated in some way, but if you don’t, then there’s gonna be a response.

One could be to walk, one could be to sit it out. Have you been in the situation where you haven’t known how it might play out over a longer period of time? And what have you done in that situation to try and find out more about the organisation that you’ve been working for?

Marcus Iles: Yeah, I think maybe it’s happened once or twice where I’ve thought [00:24:00] give them the benefit doesn’t feel right, but give them the benefit.

Not all of it’s instinct and intuition. There are I’ve not had this, but I know plenty of organisations that suffer from it. If, during the onboarding process, you don’t feel like you’ve got the empowerment that you signed up to in the job spec, or you haven’t got the tools or you haven’t got the pay even.

And, there are tangible demonstrations of them not living up to their promise. But I think in that intuition, if it is about the feeling, which tends to be more of a culture thing, doesn’t it? If there is clearly some schism going on and people aren’t happy or there’s a bit of backbiting or, people just are frustrated.

Even I’ve given it the benefit once or twice. The one that I’m thinking of. It was absolutely right that I left, so I left before the end of the probation. I don’t see any problem with giving people the benefit though. I think every employee in an organisation should, or at least theoretically, has the chance to make things better if they’re a bit crap, as well as [00:25:00] make things worse if they were going quite well.

Like you all play your part. So I’ve also been in situations where people have, maybe this is a different way of answering it, but I’ve been in situations relatively recently, although obviously I’ve been working for 125 years, and not that recently, but relatively recently, where there was somebody in a people function who was pointing out this problem with onboarding, pointing out that there was a bit of a culture thing, pointing out that things weren’t right.

Pointing out. And I think there is a bit of a, if you are not a part of the solution, then you are potentially the problem. So to say, in that coffee with the most senior person you’ve managed to get a hold of, all you’re doing is holding up a mirror saying, this is a lot crapier than I thought it would be.

If I was the most senior person you’d got a hold of. I’d say, we’ll see you later then. Whereas if you’re saying there’s a problem here, have you thought about, I think I would’ve preferred, or, to build on it, to try and add a solution to the problem, then I think you’re [00:26:00] demonstrating everything an employer could ask for really.

So maybe that’s another way looking at it.

Chris Hudson: Yeah, for sure. I’ve seen that and I’ve probably been that person as well. Just going in and asking too many questions of what’s there. And I’ve been told as well particularly when you join in the senior capacity, it’s your job to try and come and help us do something about this too.

And damn it. And that’s not what you want to hear. You think you’re just pointing out some things. But actually it’s all true. Know, particularly as you become more senior, you need to show that you’re invested. Have you been in that situation as well?

Marcus Iles: Oh, for sure. I think there’s a lovely first probably actually the second senior position you get in whichever industry you’re at.

The first one I’d argue is typically a you’re so enthusiastic. It doesn’t really matter what you know, what you don’t. But the second one you take, particularly if you leave to a new organisation, I think it’s human nature to feel a bit swagger. I think you’ll find I’ve arrived. Where, yeah this is where leadership, I think is having to adjust to a new working [00:27:00] philosophy, which is we’re pretty much in it.

All of us, every single one of us. And if I’ve hired you incorrectly, that’s my problem. I did that, I started it as a leader, so what am I gonna do about it? And I think that’s, filtering through it is still very easy. As I say, the bigger and more complex an organisation is, the easier it is for leadership and in those companies to hide physically, or particularly in language.

So things can get drip fed through middle management to the wider organisation, but that typically goes down into silos. So there’s no real cross-pollination or, cohesive voice for the organisation to respond. And in that leadership can just hide behind its slightly aloof way of looking at the real business, what’s really going on.

But I think, if you’ve spent any times, and I know you have in startup, there’s a wonderful sort of necessity of flat and open communication. And if you go into that, that I think they say, when an organisation gets to [00:28:00] about 50 people big, that’s when it gets really tough. If you get beyond 12-15, then you can’t just stand up and tell everybody what they’re, what they need to know for the day.

You get to 50 and you’ve, you’re starting to get little groups of teams and suddenly, whether you like it or not, as a leader, you are withdrawing into that little inner circle. And that is so difficult to fight against. But I think that is that certainly, that’s what I say to the smaller clients that I work with is, that’s the bit you’ve gotta be self aware about, that people need to feel part of something.

If you withdraw, they won’t. It’s as simple as that. So that’s a very rambling answer to the question.

Chris Hudson: No that’s good. Rambling is what we want on the podcast. That’s what the podcast is all about. Tell me about it the other way round. To imagine I, has this happened to you where you are in the leadership position and somebody joins your team, and then they’re the ones that leave because of the onboarding experience and because of some of the things that you may have pointed out.

So you are the leader, you’re the hiring manager. Yeah. And somebody’s joined your team and they don’t think it’s what they’re expecting. [00:29:00] Has that happened?

Marcus Iles: Oh, for sure.

I, yeah. Advertising all the time. And I think, the reasons will be I think their egos play far too big a role in the communications and creative industry far bigger than they should. You know, every business has the right to make a lot of money out of egos if they can.

But when they’re self-destructive, when it’s not really part being part of anything unfortunately there are a lot of the agencies that I’ve worked with where that would happen. People would turn up with a sense of, I’ve arrived, as I was saying earlier, and actually, that sort of down to earth actually, mate, you’re doing a little campaign for this local client over here.

And sorry, but that’s a job can be really difficult for people to swallow. And I think, there’s maybe that’s another thing that I was looking for in the industry at large was a bit of humility. That actually all advertising does is sell stuff to people who didn’t realise they needed it.

I think this whole kind of purpose driven journey that the industry’s been on for the last 10 years or so is a little bit off [00:30:00] piste. And I don’t think that’s helped our cause, the industry’s cause in increasing the value of creativity. So yeah, there were plenty of personalities who would turn up and say, I’ve won at Cannes.

Where’s my seat at the top table? Could you just do some work first sort of thing. And they would then move on. But that’s cool. That’s cool. There was something that I always observed in advertising, which was the people who did the work that merited, like who consistently performed.

In a way that merited, if not ego, the confidence to know that what they were suggesting was probably right, carried on doing really well, even if they were quite abrasive with it. And I always celebrated advertising for that. There was no sort of, oh we’ve all just got to be a big family. I hated that.

I still recoil at that phrase in organisations. It’s not a family. A business doesn’t invite itself around for Christmas. Apart from anything else who’d wanna [00:31:00] work with your family. I love my family. I wouldn’t wanna run a business with them. But advertising was always quite good at accepting very weird people personality wise, just because they were brilliant.

And I think there’s something that wider industries can learn from that, I think.

Chris Hudson: Yeah, absolutely. There, there’s a big push obviously in the diversity conversations that are happening now. Where it’s expected that collaboration is there and diversity is there. And obviously that place is a it’s almost a yardstick.

It has to be there in some way or another. It wasn’t always the case. And yet that diversity was still there and represented through the advertising industry with the weird and wonderful. And the ideas that came from it were just brilliant a lot of the time. Yeah. But maybe that kind of madness and that eccentricity it’s too hard to manage these days.

There’s still a lot of diversity, there’s still a representation that’s ever growing now. But actually it can be quite easy to fall outta line, when things are [00:32:00] said and it’s not always a cookie cutter kind of team environment.

Marcus Iles: Business doesn’t exist in a bubble, does it? If you look at wider popular culture, and I’m far too old to say that phrase, there’s, the internet has taught us to be very black and white, vociferous in our opinion.

And, there’s an unwritten set of morals that nobody really understands, but everybody is petrified of breaking and business is totally susceptible to that. So to stand your ground when you’ve got an opinion, even if people will take it the wrong way, not like it lambaste you for it or whatever is.

Impossible. It’s, I was gonna say terrifying, but businesses have shareholders who won’t like that very much, and so there is a degree of keeping head below the parapet. By and large, it’s a good thing. The way that business is demanding more in terms of equality, in terms of, I mean with a very small m [00:33:00] morality and so on, I think is a really good thing for people and certainly, young people starting out.

But it does make it very difficult to be authentic and be honest and to learn something new. Actually, the great thing about meeting different points of view is that both parties theoretically, at least if the conversations run properly, will learn something. That whole environment is harder to come by, so great DE and I. Because obviously the whole point of having a diverse workforce is that you get better ideas and better ways of working and better output. But can people open up and confront each other in a safe and trusting environment because they’ve got that diversity in front of them?

That’s a totally different issue, I think, which is why psychological safety is such a buzz phrase at the moment, isn’t it? And I think to invest in that as a leader is a really good investment. I think that is ultimately where you’re gonna get your innovation.

Chris Hudson: Yep. It’s psychological [00:34:00] safety. It means different things to different people. Because it’s very personal to you. What does it mean to you? You’ve talked a bit about almost being, you just, you described yourself as a nightmare, but disruptor what does psychological safety look like for you?

Marcus Iles: Maybe it comes back to that sense of that objective vision and mission that we’ve got as a group of people all working for one employer. So if we’ve got that as an objective thing, we’re all aiming for, and I believe that your motive as my colleague is to get there.

And you believe that my motive is too. Then if I can criticise where you are coming from. You’ll get theoretically that’s where we’re headed. And that’s my motive. And I think if I can do my very best to make sure that’s done in a way that builds you up, not cuts you down then it’s for the common good.

I’ve got a client who I’m working with at the moment who are incredibly successful and I’m just trying to [00:35:00] work with them to formulate. They’re going through an enormous bit of growth. They’ve got a culture that they haven’t had to define and they’ve got to one of those tipping points, 170 people or something.

And I came into the project saying obviously you need your vision, your mission, and your strategy, and then we’ll work out initiatives and objectives and all that sort of stuff. And their response was, we don’t do any of that. That’s too corporate. So you’re like, okay, what do I do now?

Cuz you need that. You need it because how’s anybody coming into the business gonna say, no, we just don’t do it. So unpicking it. These guys are genuinely incredible. Quality and hard work and their two key drivers, their success is hindsight. For them, it’s yeah, we’ve done it so you can trust us, we’ll do it.

So actually going into an environment and they talk to each other very directly. So how do you create a kind of template so that as they grow onboarding, people will [00:36:00] know that’s okay, and that’s the way things are done. It’s a nightmare because you are basically setting people up to be told very directly that what they’re doing isn’t good enough or is good, but needs to be done in this way and so on.

But it is still ultimately about the vision that they’ve got and the mission that they’ve got and the strategy that they’re going through to implement it. They just don’t like that language. And I’m like, brilliant. Let’s de corporatise it all. I’ll keep that language for myself cuz it helps me structure how I’m gonna help you communicate it.

But ultimately you have got psychological safety, not because they’re putting any kind of training into it or they’re doing workshops or anything, but just because they say we do nothing but hard work and quality are you in? And people go, yeah, okay.

Chris Hudson: You’re talking a bit about the threshold of 50 people and then getting to one 70, and now you’re working with them. Now they’re 170. Do you feel like, anything about how they’ve transitioned from being smaller to scaling up and being larger and what’s behind their success in that sense?

Marcus Iles: There’s their key [00:37:00] success which is also the reason why I and others are helping them out for this stage.

Their key success is the unity and absolute straight down the line communication from the founders, which is brilliant. They all talk as one. They all have exactly the same way of approaching every single business problem, whether it’s finance, people, product, or whatever. It’s all done through this kind of quality and hard work lens.

And they’re interchangeable. So they have a CEO, but he’s one of five. Obviously the real challenge is succession. How do you create something that when they’re potentially a hundred thousand people big, I, whether or not they even wanna get that big, who knows? How does that work?

And I think that question, I work with a range of different sizes of clients, but I always find that is one of the best questions to ask at any stage is, okay, we’ve got, I’m typically there to help solve some [00:38:00] sort of strategic activation problem. If I ask the question, what’s your succession plan?

Who’s next?

Inevitably, that brings up the point that we started with, which is how do you spot and raise up those people who can engage, inspire, and genuinely evoke a response out of people? How do you get the people who, when they’re asked for a coffee, are the embodiment of that vision and that mission, and therefore the implementation of a strategy is a total no-brainer.

So creating a template, creating some objective expression of the founders is really what I’m involved in for this particular client. But I think it’s true for any organisation. How do you have that actually as a founder or as a leader? This business is bigger than me as an individual.

I’m an embodiment of it. So what’s the objective thing of it that I can embody rather than how can everybody be like me? [00:39:00] It’s a really complicated way of answering, but I think that’s, that is an absolute mind scramble for many more egotistical leaders is how do I create a bigger thing out of the business and its vision and its mission than me?

There’s a great conversation to have with people, that’s for sure.

Chris Hudson: Absolutely. And it can sound a little bit abstract, particularly when you’re not using strategic documentation to back it up and there isn’t, a 300 page version of that written somewhere for everyone to read when they first arrive.

Yeah. I get the feeling as well that there’s a lot of short-termism. Not in terms of just defining it, but also in terms of proximity and relevance to me and what it means to me right now. So if you’re just joining an organisation you’ve got a surface level of understanding of what that will mean, what that mission is and how I’m gonna play a role within that context.

But what you’re gonna do about it is still very focused on the now and the things that you can affect in a fairly short space of time. And a lot of businesses still run where you’re looking at what’s happening [00:40:00] this week, next week, or this quarter. And it’s not bigger than that. That’s all you’re focused on.

How do you give people that sense of gravity and inspiration and excitement around something that’s broader and much bigger?

Marcus Iles: It’s a real challenge. And a great question. I think half of me wants to say that you have to embrace it, that the speed of change, the acceleration of change for businesses is increasingly bewildering. It’s not just that if you’re not changing, you’re dying. It’s the how do I keep up with the change. Strategy in itself is a great place to start. No strategy that’s ever written by a leader or a leadership team is ever the strategy that actually, achieves its objectives.

They need constant iteration, occasionally rewriting, we’ve got global pandemics under our belt to tell us that. And I think there’s a kind of fallacy in this security of business and talking for myself personally, having taken the leap to start my own thing again at my,[00:41:00] venerable age.

There is a constant sort of, oh, crikey, wouldn’t it just be easier if I had a paycheck? But it’s a fallacy. No business is in a position where it can really cater for the future, but we all need that sense of, but this is gonna be okay, isn’t it? So one way that I try and help clients is to say to them let’s look at what you wanna achieve in 18 months with a total open-minded point of view on whether or not that needs to change.

Now, how do we create something that inspires people with their individual job to do for that 18 months? Going back to startup where you’ve got half dozen people, maybe they’re, they’ve got seed funding or whatever. Everybody knows what they’ve got to do and it’s far too much, but they know what they’ve got to do.

You get to a business of 150, 5000 and everybody gets that it’s a good place to work and it’s okay, but what is it we’re trying to do over the next 18 months? What is the risk of us not doing it? Where is that sense of inspired urgency in joining this [00:42:00] business and being a part of its success?

So I think that’s what I try and inject into the work that I give my clients. I genuinely think, I know it’s me as a, an individual. It’s definitely the sort of thing that inspires me. But I think maybe being a bit more frank and transparent with their people, I think businesses could probably benefit from treating their people like grownups to say, look, there, there’s a big risk if we don’t do A, B, C, D, E, F, and G.

There’s a massive opportunity if we do, but this is what’s in it for you. This is what’s in it for your team. This is what’s in it for us as an organization if we succeed. So embrace it , that tends to be, probably not that bluntly, but that tends to be my advice to clients. Embrace that unknown, embrace that need to change and change consistently.

I think.

Chris Hudson: Yeah, we’ve talked about psychological safety and linking that to this point. It feels like for some, the paycheck and almost a static work environment would be totally comfortable. [00:43:00] You’d come in Tuesday morning, you’d know exactly what was gonna happen. The meeting format would run the same way as it did last Tuesday, and you might have some different actions and you’d come back to the meeting, the following Tuesday and talk about them.

It feels like there’s a lot of comfort in that, and thinking about startups and, the world of just slicing that into so many pieces and just turning up each day and being present and not knowing what the day will bring. That would be completely daunting for some people.

Yeah. How do you feel it, it can be managed as a whole even though there are so many different preferences for psychological safety and within the world of work?

Marcus Iles: I guess I don’t wanna be flippant about this, cuz you’re right, it’s a quagmire of issues. But I think there’s something in the the joy, the satisfaction in doing a really good day’s work.

There’s something that is really overlooked about applying yourself to a job in a way that you know is creating real impact is making a difference. And [00:44:00] actually in that, being able to really tell whether your heart’s in that job. There are plenty of people who coast, if you’re forced to do a really hard day’s work.

And I’m not just talking about the previous client I was talking about, but I think generally speaking, that ability to really apply yourself, understand the result of it, the result of that work of your hands is a really satisfying, really wholesome. It’s something that feeds you mentally, feeds you obviously financially and so on.

So I think it would be the same point for me, yes, there is total volatility, unpredictability, every strategy gets changed, rewritten, whatever. But the thing we’re asking you to do can be really consistent that A, B, and C can be really mundane, but it’s gonna have massive impact. So the security is less about that.

Maybe it goes back to a little bit of the kind of purpose driven distraction that advertising’s been on. It’s less about the business is going to change the world maybe and more about what you’re doing [00:45:00] today is making a really definite, but incremental difference to how we operate, what we do for our clients or customers or whatever, and so on.

And again, it’s transparency. I think pre, pre, the industrial revolution when we were certainly in the uk, an I guess everywhere, it was an artisanal sort of approach to business, wasn’t it? It was farming, it was making stuff. Everybody knew what they were doing and everybody did it.

And that was it. And it was family, it was community and you got on with it. And then suddenly there was that extraction of that into people who ran a business and people who were paid to make it succeed. And I don’t think we’ve ever really recovered from that. I think there is still a perpetuation of the leadership know that the only way they can fulfil their strategy is through the people who are working for them.

But no real transparency to back that up. It’s lost in either the leadership language or in the kind of the [00:46:00] panic that everything’s changing. But don’t tell our people cuz they need security or whatever. I think we’re not really working as hard as we need to just be transparent about the good and the bad bits of having a job maybe.

Chris Hudson: That, that’s such good point around how work came about and and the fact that you’re once a maker or a doer, a master of your craft in some sort of way, and then all of a sudden you’re leading a company doing just that, but not really doing it because somebody else is doing it, or a team of people are doing it.

And yet you’re still expected to know enough about it to obviously evolve the company, evolve the proposition, keep it fresh, innovate. There’s a lot to balance there. From a cultural point of view in defining that, but also setting up for a culture of innovation, how does that best get set up in your view to allow for that kind of blend of expertise, but constant evolution?

Marcus Iles: First and foremost, turn up for the coffee that the new starters asked you for, be visible, walk the floors, create touchpoints and [00:47:00] opportunities, moments that will really matter to your people where you are visible and where you and your leadership are saying the same thing. And I think again, that is actually really helped by having that objective expression of your vision, your mission, and your strategy.

Having a thing that you can all say out loud together. You can localise your own individual teams, but something that you’ve all co-created. So it’s your language to your people and something that they can really understand and get back. I think there’s a lot to be learned from advertising in terms of understanding your customer.

It’s a real science in communications, isn’t it? Just getting those insights about what really will cut through, connect and drive commitment from the people you’re trying to communicate with. And yet in business certainly with very large, complicated organisations, I don’t know if there’s that sort of emphasis.

I know that there’s the ability to, you’ve got a captive audience about how many leaders really have access to live, ongoing insights about who their people are, [00:48:00] their ages, demographics, what they listen to, the news sites they read, the stuff they’re interested in. But getting that gives you a platform to be able to connect, and in that visibility and that ongoing communication, you’re talking to people who will think, wow, this guy gets me, or this woman gets me.

So I think I think those things, and then obviously flippancy abounds, but I think you’ve gotta do what you say you’re gonna do. You’ve got to, there’s got to be an authenticity about what you say the business is up for, what you say the challenges are, what you say the opportunities are, that’s the born out and how you act.

That is really difficult when business is constantly changing. It’s a great quarter, we’re all safe, everything’s brilliant, let’s go three weeks later, what do we do? We’ve gotta make cuts, so it is not easy, but there has to be transparency in, there has to be a sense of treating people like grownups, I think.

So yeah, visibility. Following through on your commitments, just practice authenticity and inspiration. Those [00:49:00] two things, like inspiration I genuinely believe isn’t a charisma thing. It is it’s a muscle. You flex and it gets stronger. It’s how do I get people and understand what they need to be motivated to do something differently or better.

Chris Hudson: Is inspiration, this is something I know you feel passionately about, but inspiration. Is it something that’s presented to you or something you feel inside yourself?

Marcus Iles: I think it’s both. I think it’s a spirit thing from the kind of root word of it.

So I think it exists in all of us, the ability to be inspired and yet it’s incredibly nuanced and unique and individual. So it is a, an entirely human thing. So as a leader, you can inspire yourself, be inspired by your people, and also inspire your people. And I think that’s possibly one of those pivot points of that mutually rewarding relationship between an organisation and its people, is that you can inspire each other and be inspired by each other.

So I think, look, on a [00:50:00] really base level, there are professional speech writers who will write for a politician or a CEO who will make what they’ve got to say inspirational. So it is a, it’s a tool and a skill and a muscle that we can get better at. But even apart from that, I think there’s the ability to shake off the veneer, shake off the imposter syndrome, and just look at what we’re really here for as leaders, what we really believe is possible if this organisation is foreign cylinders, and to communicate that and commit to it visibly and through action and through communication.

I think that is inspiration at its heart.

Chris Hudson: Yeah. That’s definitely the heart of its delivery. I’m wondering whether you can almost break down inspiration. I know you’ve been inspired by a number of things. I can see some things behind you there but it means different things to different people.

So if you were trying to inspire people with a broader set of principles, what could people consider for evoking inspiration in one way or another?

Marcus Iles: The inspiration that I talk [00:51:00] about in work is very specifically around the job to do for an organisation. So how do you get a group of people together to stand on common ground and head towards a common goal?

And I think in that, the tools really are what I’ve explained. There’s an opportunity for this organisation to get to this destination X. There are massive challenges along the way that we can be totally transparent about. But for authentic, incredible reasons, A, B, and C, they’re totally doable.

We can do this, but only if we E, F, and G go through that very clear and transparent set of things to do that you all get, you all understand cuz it’s being told to you in a language that you get and we will come through it and we will get to destination X. So I think it is, I call it a manifesto.

It’s a form of storytelling. It’s that combination of what is possible coupled with an [00:52:00] authentic, incredible way of getting there, wrapped in a language that strips out all of that leadership nonsense and just says, this organisation is made up of people. This strategy will only succeed through its people. Are you in?

And just makes it that simple.

Chris Hudson: I wanna just finish by asking you a bit about how you deal with certain situations. So when it’s tough and it can be, how do you respond to that and how do you pick yourself up and keep going?

Marcus Iles: For me as an individual, I just cry. Chris, I cry sob.

It’s a good question. I’m pretty sure I’ve got ADHD, which actually helps. So I tend to like I feel challenges. I’m quite a sensitive human being and they can stop me in my tracks, but I tend to be able to switch into another challenge really quickly if only because I’ll get bored of wallowing.

I count that as a bit of a totally unintentional superpower. And otherwise it’s family, it’s really [00:53:00] crass and twee and obvious, but, people who live the longest really prioritise friends and family. It’s a fact. So even if it’s just my business life, I’d like that to exist for as long as possible.

So I tend to just go away with my children and my wife and we just sit in the garden or whatever.

Chris Hudson: Lovely. And what’s one piece of advice for other intrapreneurs that could be in advertising, there could be anywhere else, but for people that wanna make a difference and make themselves known within their organisation, apart from the coffee and having that with the leadership, what else would you recommend they do?

Marcus Iles: There’s a really rough framework that I garbled through. So listen to that again. Write down the challenge you’ve got. But where you think you could get to, if you overcame that challenge, write it into a story or a manifesto or something that shows you are in it for the change. Not just pointing out the bleeding obvious problem and take it to the most senior leader you can find and say that to read it out to them over that coffee.

Cos ultimately people will get your commitment from it. So it’s kinda a win-win situation, I would say.

Chris Hudson: And following that through and in your experience of doing this, I’m sure, where has this led? What is the impact that you’ve been able to achieve, do you think by doing some of these things,

Marcus Iles: At the very least you have the catharsis of knowing you tried, like you’ve played your part in however big an organisation you’ve played your part in improving it.

Best case scenario is that people recognise you for the intrapreneur that you are, best case scenario for me, I think I have arrogantly or cockily weaseled my way into much better opportunities just by pointing out the bleeding obvious with a build, with some kind of opportunity to improve it.

I think that the attitude has actually brought me to the best place, which is just running my own thing and having my own sense of control and my own manifesto, if you like. So I dunno whether other people would count that as something to aim for, but for me it feels like a natural, the natural progression for that way of looking at work.

Chris Hudson: Perfect. All right. Thanks so much Marcus. Tell us a bit about [00:55:00] yourself. Your business, where can people find you? If they wanna connect with you in some way, we can mention it on the show.

Marcus Iles: Bless you. The plug? Yeah, give us a plug. The website is manifestive.works

So manifestive

you can spell it yourselves.. And it’s a,

I call it a strategic catalyst, so it’s a strategy activation agency. We mix strategy and creativity and get change done in businesses. But have a look at the website and obviously drop me a line if you wanna know anymore.

Chris Hudson: Okay, so that’s it for this episode. If you’re hearing this message, you’ve listened all the ways to the end, so thank you very much. We hope you enjoyed the show. We’d love to hear your feedback, so please leave us a review and share this episode with your friends, team members, leaders if you think it’ll make a difference.

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