GOOD CEOs: Issue 11

Only working hard
made me
a lousy CEO
😓 

Humans are weird. We have form for sticking around when we ought to be moving on. We lodge ourselves in the same relationships, the old places, the secure jobs, and ingrained habits. And we usually cling to these things long after they’ve stopped serving us.

Stuckness is down to how we’re wired psychologically: our minds prefer a familiar misery to an unfamiliar freedom. Or as Virgina Satir, an American psychotherapist put it: “People prefer the certainty of misery to the misery of uncertainty.”

This is worth paying attention to, especially if you’re leading a company. Many of the biggest commercial mistakes in history can be traced to a leader naively applying an outdated practice to a new scenario. It could be the thinking, the technology, the talent, the design, the marketing – or anything – but the problem is the same.

We stick around when we should move on. At UNKNOWN we like to frame it like this…

 
What got you here,
won’t get you there
 

I had my own moment of realisation about this when the company was in the midst of its first growth phase.

It was 2021.
We were five people.
The pace of work was crazy.
Responding to briefs, doing the searches, chasing the invoices.

One afternoon, I looked at our bank balance and realised that there was one month’s worth of salaries in there. My head was pounding. My shoulders were up around my ears: I felt heavy. We just needed to work harder, for longer.

Then I did something unexpected: I stopped.

And had a sauna.

When my body relaxed, an idea bubbled up. Then another. I started scribbling into my (slightly wet) notebook. Then I felt guilty. Shouldn't I be chasing invoices? Shouldn't I be winning new clients? Shouldn't I be working?

I called a mentor for some reassurance (shoutout Jonathan Trimble, co-founder & CEO of And Rising).

“JT, I've just spent an hour in a sauna at 3pm and I feel goodshit about it."

“Congratulations,” he replied. “You're moving from being an operator to an ideas guy.”

At the start, being useful is the job. But when things get bigger – or more complex – the skills that got you here start getting in the way of your getting there. You strive for completion. It feels productive, safe, and gives evidence to your movement.

But the most valuable things I've ever contributed to UNKNOWN haven’t come from working harder. They’ve arrived after I’ve created enough space to think. There comes a point where the most valuable thing you can do isn't another email. It's a better idea.

And that's a surprisingly uncomfortable transition to make – and I still catch myself fighting it now. Then I remember that afternoon. The team got paid. The business survived. And the idea in that wet notebook turned out to be worth far more than the hour I spent chasing invoices.

That was the moment when I let go of a familiar misery – and ran towards an unfamiliar freedom.

If this resonates with you, I’d love to know. What’s the hardest thing you’ve ever had to let go of in your career – was it a place, a person, or a practice?

☝️
PREDICTION ONE:
IP is the future
 

Time is money. At least, it used to be. For the last forty years or so, the advertising industry operated on the assumption that clients offer money for creative work. And that spend fluctuates based on how long the job takes. More time equals bigger fees. 

Now AI is scything down the number of hours creatives spend on production tasks. Strategy decks, visual concepts, copywriting – it is all happening with more speed than before. Clients are saying:

 
‘If lots of human hours
means a large bill,
shouldn’t fewer constitute
a smaller one?’
 

This question will mean agency businesses that put a premium on production will see their revenue strangled.

The big question is: how do you stop this from happening?

I think it comes down to three stages, which ends up with intellectual property accounting for a bigger slice of agency revenues. Here’s how it breaks down.

 
1. Productisation

This is the first post-hourly solution for agencies. Instead of selling people spending time doing things, they sell products.

Not:
“Two strategists, a senior creative and a designer, with 120 hours each”.
 
Instead:
“Our market-entry sprint that delivers on this specific commercial outcome.”

The client buys the result of the work, rather than a timesheet.

 
2. Outcome based pricing

This is where it gets even more interesting. The agency cuts a deal with the client, saying something like: ‘We’ll lower our fee, but if we can measure £X million of value from our work, we’ll share a percentage of the upside.’

This scenario produces a different dynamic. Suddenly, the agency is doing more than selling time – it’s entered into a contract where the quality of the work matters in a way that it didn’t before. The agency has gone from being a supplier to having genuine skin in the game.

 
3. Asset ownership

Then comes the third stage, and I think this is where the biggest opportunity sits. Instead of helping clients build assets, agencies start owning assets themselves.

That might be a software product. A podcast. A research platform. A media brand. An events business. A creator partnership. It doesn't really matter what form it takes. The important thing is that you've built something that keeps creating value long after the original work has finished.

Why now?

Because AI changes the economics.

If AI keeps reducing the cost of production, service margins inevitably come under pressure. Agencies can respond by squeezing people harder – or they can start building things they own. And this is where I think independent agencies have a huge advantage.

Imagine you're a listed holding company. Your shareholders expect predictable quarterly growth. It's very difficult to say, ‘We're going to invest millions building something that might not generate meaningful returns for five years.’

Now imagine you're a 40-person independent agency. It gets way easier to make that bet. You can decide to spend six months building something because you believe it could become a meaningful business in its own right.

Ironically, AI might widen the gap between independents and the holding companies. Not because independents make better work, but because they're structurally better placed to think long term.

I think the biggest question agencies will ask over the next decade won't be, “What services can we sell?”

It'll be:

“What can we own?”
 

This is a totally different business model. And I think that's where professional services are heading.

✌️
PREDICTION TWO:
Reinventing the apprenticeship
 

My second prediction is a hopeful one. And it concerns junior talent.

In the 2010s, breaking into the creative industries got significantly harder. The aftermath of the financial crisis, consolidation, offshoring and leaner agency models put a clamp on entry-level hiring. Then in 2020, covid disrupted recruitment, and saw grad schemes discontinued. Most recently – from 2023 – AI accelerated a decline in traditional junior roles: transcribing interviews. Building decks. Research. First drafts. The monotonous work that all of us did when we first joined the industry.

Those jobs are disappearing.

At the same time, companies have spent the last few years investing heavily in AI. When budgets are tight, it's understandable that software often looks like a better investment than hiring someone who's going to take a few years to reach full potential. But I think we're now beginning to understand what AI is actually good at.

It's brilliant at execution.

It's much less brilliant at judgement. Trust. Relationships. Curiosity. Persuasion.

So perhaps we've been asking the wrong question.

Instead of asking, “What repetitive work can we give this person?” we should be asking,

 
“How quickly
can they start
creating value?”
 

That changes the approach totally. Maybe junior people spend less time formatting slides and more time speaking to customers. Maybe they're researching competitors, exploring partnerships, interviewing clients and presenting ideas. Maybe they spend less time behind a screen and more time around experienced people.

I also think we've been unfair to younger people in another way.

There's this assumption that because they're 22, they somehow understand AI better than everyone else. This is BS.

They're learning these tools at exactly the same time as the rest of us.

 
What they need isn't to become the AI person.
They need to become the person AI can't replace.
 

The 10,000 hours still matter. I just don't think those 10,000 hours should be spent learning tasks that computers now perform better than humans. I think they should be spent learning how to understand people, build trust, persuade, communicate and create opportunities.

Ironically, the better AI gets, the more valuable those human skills become.

If businesses redesign the apprenticeship around those skills, this generation could enter the industry with more responsibility – and more meaningful work – than any generation before it.

✌️☝️
PREDICTION THREE:
From being available to being valuable
 

Our third prediction might be the most controversial. And I’ve been trolled on social in the last few months for saying it. So I’m going to say it again.

It starts with LinkedIn’s green #OpenToWork banner.

All the evidence that we see points to one thing: featuring this status on your LinkedIn profile makes you less desirable to anyone recruiting for a role.

The creative industry currently has an oversupply of talent and an undersupply of permanent roles. In markets like that, desirability is the thing that matters. Whether we like it or not, people tend to assume that if someone is difficult to hire, they're probably worth hiring.

This is not the world I want to see. But it’s the one we’re living in.

The mistake a lot of people make after redundancy is trying to become as visible as possible. I think the better strategy is becoming as distinctive as possible. 

Before telling the world you're available, ask yourself something much more useful:

• What am I actually available for?

• What kind of work gives me energy?

• What problems am I particularly good at solving?

• What do I want to become known for?

Once you've answered those questions, your story changes completely.

Instead of saying, “I'm available for work,” you're saying, “Over the last five years I've helped companies do this. These are the problems I love solving. If you're facing one of them, I'd love to talk.”

This changes the emphasis of the conversation. Volunteering yourself openly is passive, but marketing yourself with specificity is active.

Then make a list of the people you've loved working with.

Make another list of the people you'd love to work with.

Reach out. Tell your story. Start conversations.

People are generally good. They're helpful. They'll introduce you to someone. They'll think of you when an opportunity comes up.

This isn't really a prediction about LinkedIn.

It's a prediction about personal brands.

As AI makes information more abundant and everyone easier to find, simply being visible won't be enough. The people who stand out will be the people who can clearly explain the value they create.

 
Visibility gets attention.
Clarity creates opportunity.

Cannes-do attitude
 

We couldn’t release this newsletter without including a quick de-brief on the Cannes Lions International Festival of Creativity 2026.

Every year people obsess over how much the festival has changed since the arrival of big tech into the advertising scene. Obviously Cannes has changed. And that’s exactly why it’s still relevant.

This year's festival felt like three events happening simultaneously.

 
1.
The first is the Cannes Lions most people know: a celebration of world-class creative work. Legacy agencies continue to perform strongly, but some of the biggest winners were young independent studios – a reminder that great ideas still have the power to break through.

 
2.
The second is the world of media and technology. Spotify, Snap, Meta and the major platforms aren't there simply to throw parties. They're there because advertising is their business. Cannes has become one of the industry's biggest marketplaces for relationships, partnerships and media investment.

 
3.
The third – and fastest-growing – cohort is the creator economy. Influencers and creators are no longer on the sidelines of the festival; they're becoming central to it. As audiences increasingly consume content through individuals rather than institutions, it makes sense that Cannes has evolved alongside them.

The most noticeable shift was to do with AI. Last year, people were still tweaking over what sort of damage the technology might wreak on the industry – taking jobs, creating slop, erasing businesses. But this year the mood felt noticeably different. AI has become part of the furniture. The conversation has moved on to a more interesting question: how do creativity, technology, media and creators work together?

 
It’s what you make it

Cynicism is the enemy of creativity. Yet the festival attracts its fair share of contempt.

 
“It’s not about the work anymore.”
“It’s just a big tech show these days.”
“Who TF are all these creators?”
“This rose is warm…”
 

I think Cannes is what you make of it. And that there is something for every single person in the creative economy. Whether you’re media, tech, creative, creator or everything in between.

The point of Cannes isn’t one element.

It’s all of it. You go there to get out of your lane. 

Find the cabanas too garish? Cool, head to one of the villas. Didn’t enjoy the panels? Great! Head to the palais and see the work. Didn’t like any of it? Fine! Book a lunch on the sea with your favourite people and ask them to bring along someone you don’t know.

This year we felt the same, so we set two events up that captured all of these audiences so they melted together.

Sort of ‘engineered serendipity’.

Or better: ‘The Melting Pot theory’.

 
You get out of your lane.
You meet someone you didn’t know.
You learn think something you didn’t think before.
 

It’s the best thing about this incredible industry that we’re so lucky to be a part of. You get what you put in. And if you still didn’t enjoy it, that’s OK. Do something about it, or don’t go. Just – for lord’s sake – don’t moan.

We designed our events to bring different worlds together. Designers met investors. Brand leaders met founders. Creative studios met technology companies. We even tested a new card game designed to spark the kinds of conversations that don't usually happen at networking events.

Perhaps that's the real lesson from Cannes. Its value doesn't come from staying the same.

It knows when to move on, rather than stick around. And when to step into an unfamiliar freedom.

All my faith and love,

Ollie