Human Powered: High-performing agency & consultancy teams

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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!

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.

Introverted CEO using a coaching culture to drive business success - with Zsuzsanna Recsey

How do you create a business where both extroverts and introverts can thrive?
Zsuzsanna Recsey is CEO at the community engagement agency, Standing on Giants. Previously an executive coach, she became CEO 4 years ago and has grown the business from 25 to 60 people.
In this episode, Zsuzsanna shares how she:
Has embedded a culture of resilience, emotional intelligence and coaching through individual and team programmes
Builds trust by always assuming that her team, clients and stakeholders have the best of intentions 
Makes sure the leadership team consistently demonstrates their values in all day-to-day activities
Has a process to quickly identify and address behaviour that doesn't align with their values
Has created an inclusive environment so introverts can contribute as much as extroverts
Creates space for reflection so they can all always learn from what they’ve done
Zsuzsanna’s thoughtful and reflective approach continues to create a high-performing team and a high-performing business. She’s not the typical Jazz Hands agency CEO.

Placing the idea that anything is possible at the heart of the business - with Sam Fenton-Elstone

How do you set the ethos of your entire business just from its name?
Sam Fenton-Elstone is CEO & Co-Founder at Anything is Possible. He’s grown his agency to 65 people in just 6 years, winning almost 40 awards along the way.
In this episode, Sam shares how he:
Embeds the idea that ‘life is better when anything is possible’ across every aspect of the business 
Gets the right balance between having structure and boundaries, and granting autonomy
Sets the business up so autonomous team members can make good decisions as quickly as possible - and so the business benefits from collective intelligence
Constantly strives to build a better, more exciting, more inclusive agency compared to the norm
Runs the business like a university with a disproportionate spend on L&D and a strong Alumni network
Encourages everyone to push themselves forward in a way that’s right for them - enabling the team to collectively operate at their highest possible output 
Sam isn’t interested in Anything is Possible becoming a big agency. Instead, he wants them to be a great agency with everyone doing their best ever work whilst there.