For God’s sake, Ollie.
Stop starting
and start finishing.
 

A CFO once gave me a piece of advice that was

(i) extremely useful
(ii) slightly offensive

“Stop starting and start finishing.”

I’m a chronic ‘starter’. I get energy from new things: projects, approaches, relationships, clients. Fresh perspectives that we can apply to the business. And for the first few years of UNKNOWN, that felt like the most essential part of my job as founder & CEO.

Ideas upon ideas upon ideas.
Something doesn’t work? Try this new thing.
Still not working? Try another new thing.

If there was a choice between stick or twist: I’ll take the twisty stick.

There’s energy in that. But it gets pretty tiring for the team trying to execute. Imagine: the founder hands down a mandate for you to get started on something using a particular method. You try a few things out, make some mistakes, start to get somewhere. Then the founder sweeps in with a new plan.

Back to the beginning.

Do that often enough and you create a business full of beginners. People who never get the chance to become brilliant at something – because the thing keeps changing.

 
“Stop starting and
start finishing.”
 

I’ve been thinking about my own contribution to that problem. Because after a block-busting record H1 at the company, we’ve meandered into an unremarkable Q3. We need a strong finish to the year, and I can feel my compulsion for new ideas returning.

Because more things = more growth, right?

Thankfully, we’ve opted for something more sensible and less aggravating for the company as a whole. The approach for Q4 is to get clear on everyone’s responsibilities. What they own. What they’re expected to contribute. How they’re rewarded. And giving them enough room to improve through the most valuable thing – doing.

That requires some restraint from me.

Because sometimes the most useful thing a founder can do with a new idea is leave it in the notebook. At least, for now.

Would someone buy
what you’ve built?

A recent Campaign headline asked whether ‘traditional agencies’ are now unsellable.

Firstly: I got stuck on the word ‘traditional’.

The Cambridge Dictionary defines this word as: “following or belonging to the customs or ways of behaving that have continued in a group of people or society for a long time without changing.”

This last bit about doing the same thing for a long time without changing is deeply unfashionable in business. Particularly in a creative industry that’s obsessed with things like innovation, evolution and transformation. And in all the briefs we’ve received from agencies, I can’t remember any brand being described that way.

 
‘Traditional agencies’:
I can’t remember any
brand being described
that way
 

Everyone has evolved. Added capabilities. Found new ways to work with clients. Maybe you would stand out by describing yourself as ‘traditional’.

Secondly: it occurred to me that there’s another question worth asking: what would make somebody not want to buy your business?

There are specific reasons. And we’ve heard them all from acquirers.

Like…

“Hmm… a big slice of the agency’s revenue
comes from a single client. That’s a lot of
exposure to the decisions of one purchaser.”
 

“I like the founder, but almost every
important relationship runs through them.
And what if they leave?”
 

“The company only runs smoothly
because it’s small. We’ll have a difficult time
making these processes work at scale.”
 

Then there are the obvious commercial questions. Is it profitable? Is it growing? Are existing clients spending more with it?

All of that matters. But the thing I’d put above the checklist is harder to quantify.

 
What are you known for?
 

A distinctive taste. A particular capability. A way of approaching a problem that makes someone say: you should speak to those people.

Could a client explain what makes you special to a friend in the pub?

That gets harder as the business grows. Clients ask for more. The money is appealing. You say yes to something you’ve never done before, then something else, until the original proposition becomes difficult to find beneath the accumulated capabilities.

Of course you can expand. But every new capability needs the same care, talent and obsession that earned you a reputation in the first place. Otherwise, you just end up with more services to sell and fewer reasons for anyone to choose you.

Being famous for something is the most motivating thing for a potential acquirer.

Even if you’re famous for being traditional.

What will this job
let someone become?

There was another question in the trade press recently: should people accept lower salaries to work at bigger agencies? To me, this idea felt like something from the noughties.

The deal used to be understandable. A famous name on your CV. Exposure to enormous clients. The apparent security of a large organisation. Perhaps it would make sense to accept a smaller salary in exchange for all that.

 
What story will
I tell about my career
in three years?
 

To get to the truth I went to where I always go: our community of creative leadership. Our internal insights tool draws on anonymised conversations our team has with people across the whole sector (to date, around 6,000 conversations).

And the number of people who confirmed they’d go low to go big might surprise you.

 
z e r o
 

That’s a finding from our conversations, rather than a verdict on every person in the industry. But the things that did come through were revealing. Our analysis revealed that – mostly speaking – people want three qualities from an employer.

 
Work.
People want to make something good.

Progression.
They want to know where the job could take them.

Autonomy.
And they want to be trusted to do it.
 

The progression question deserves much more attention in interviews. There’s a question that we encourage applicants to ask, and recruiters to be prepared to answer (and well).

“If I join your business, what story will I be able to tell about my career in three years?”

• What will I have made?

• What will I have learned?

• What responsibilities will I be ready for?

Those are substantial things to offer someone. But you have to create the conditions for them to happen.

Which is where the autonomy bit comes in.

You can hire a brilliant person, tell them they have your trust, then spend every afternoon checking their decisions, changing their work and asking whether they’ve sent that email yet. I call that fake autonomy. Responsibility without enough freedom to exercise it.

Often, the manager doing it is frightened of getting something wrong themselves. Their anxiety becomes everyone else’s working environment.

If you’re recruiting for a big position in a famous name, you’ll get the applicants. Especially in this market. But offering a vision of the life you’ll give them inside your business is what will attract the brightest minds.

Which are exactly the sort of people who are prepared to tell you those slightly offensive / extremely useful things from time-to-time.

There’s more in the latest
GOOD CEOs episode 

 
Listen to the full episode →

And if there’s a decision you’re wrestling with, hit reply. I’d love to tackle it in a future episode.

 
 
Ollie

See you in a fortnight!