Getting Sh*t Done: Tom Amies-Cull on Fixing Broken Agency Operating Models
- May 14
- 46 min read
Most companies don’t fail at strategy. They fail at execution.
In this episode of Signal & Noise, Brett House and Rio Longacre sit down with Tom Amies-Cull—a seasoned operator who has spent two decades inside the most complex, high-pressure agency environments, including senior leadership roles across IPG, Dentsu, and Kinesso.
This isn’t a conversation about AdTech plumbing. It’s about something far more fundamental—and far more broken:
How organizations actually work. Or more accurately… why they often don’t.
Drawing from years inside the machine, Tom unpacks the uncomfortable truth behind transformation in large, matrixed organizations: It’s not a strategy problem. It’s a coordination problem. It’s a leadership problem. It’s an operating model problem.
As he puts it: “Transformation usually fails not because companies lack strategy, but because they can’t convert intent into coordinated behavior.”
This is a candid, sometimes blunt breakdown of what actually gets in the way of change:
Why most “transformations” are just reorgs in disguise
How internal politics quietly kill execution
The real reason employees aren’t change-resistant—they’re resistant to bad change
Why strategy decks and org charts are not operating models
How unclear decision rights create organizational paralysis
The hidden role of middle management as the “connective tissue” of execution
Why leadership teams say they want accountability—but often avoid it in practice
There’s a lot of industry noise right now about agencies evolving into platforms, operating systems, and AI-powered machines.
Tom brings this conversation back to reality:
Most organizations are further away than they think.
Not because the vision is wrong— but because the underlying systems (people, incentives, culture, decision-making) aren’t built to support it.
The result? Pockets of excellence… held together by heroic effort, not scalable design.
Everyone is talking about AI.
But Tom reframes it:
AI isn’t a technology problem. It’s an operating model and leadership problem.
AI can accelerate planning, production, and activation—but it cannot fix:
Fragmented P&Ls
Misaligned incentives
Poor leadership behaviors
Broken decision-making structures
If those don’t change, AI just makes dysfunction happen faster.
We also explore why indie agencies and PE-backed firms may have an edge right now:
Less structural debt
Faster decision-making
Clearer accountability
Stronger focus on value creation
While legacy holdcos wrestle with complexity, challengers are moving faster—and with purpose.
This episode is about closing the gap between:
What companies say they are… and what they are actually capable of doing.
Because in today’s environment, speed matters. Clarity matters. Execution matters most.
Agency transformation
Operating models and org design
Leadership in complex organizations
AI’s real impact on the industry
The future of holding companies
…this is a must-listen.
📩 Connect with Tom: Find him on LinkedIn or through his advisory work (linked in show notes)
🎧 Follow Signal & Noise: Subscribe for more unfiltered conversations with operators shaping the future of media, advertising, and AI.
Read the full transcript below:
Brett House (00:01.187)
Hey everybody, welcome back to Signal and Noise. I'm Brett House with my co-host Ryo Longacre. Today we're talking about something that sits underneath everything in this industry, everything across industries, but doesn't get talked about nearly enough. It's how organizations actually work effectively, operationally together to achieve common goals. And our guest, Thomas, Amies-Cull call. Did I get that right? Yes, I got it right the first time.
Rio (00:06.208)
Stay there.
Tom (00:26.178)
You did? Yes, you did.
Brett House (00:28.867)
Uh, uh, he, he, as, as you've put it, and I read this in one of your things that I thought was, uh, one of your LinkedIn posts that I thought was really interesting is called creating scale with soul. Right. So how do you actually bring organizations together? There's, there's a soul component to this, which I thought was fascinating. So certainly want to dive into that, but you've spent your, your career inside large agency environments. You know, you're a senior, you have a senior role at Kinesos, the global chief delivery and transformation officer. That's quite the title.
Tom (00:56.696)
Yeah.
Brett House (00:57.439)
otherwise known as a COO maybe. Yeah. And as well as IPG, Dentsu, iProspect, I certainly knew iProspect back then in the day as COO roles. And these are high pressure, highly matrixed organizations, right? And it seems like you were right at the center of really driving organizational transformation and operational system transformation within these organizations.
Tom (00:59.862)
Otherwise, let us see if I'm correct. Yeah. Yeah.
Tom (01:14.478)
Correct.
Brett House (01:27.459)
So was that a good intro and would love you to tell the audience a little bit about yourself?
Tom (01:33.038)
Yeah, sure. So thank you for having me. Great to be here. I think the only person who calls me Thomas is probably my mother. So Tom will do. But yeah, so I've been in and around the industry for 20 plus years, as you said, working predominantly for the large holdcos. I've done a few bits and bobs outside of that. Currently outside the agencies doing some advisory consulting work. My kind of background early on was performance marketing. So working in and on clients.
hands-on keyboard, driving client accounts, et cetera, and then have moved into kind of agency management leadership roles. And as you said, Brett, sort of focusing more on COO type roles. And for me, the bit that's always stuck as the, guess, recurring theme through any of that is the people and culture element of it. And whether that's running campaigns for clients or more latterly driving transformations, it's, matter all this, the technology and the noise that sits around it, it's people in our industry are fundamentally still the core.
And so that's always been something that's been my kind of call I come back to.
Rio (02:37.61)
Well, Todd, we're thrilled to have you on this and I'm not going to call you Thomas, don't worry. And you did call it.
Brett House (02:41.997)
I don't think I called him Thomas. I said Tom Amy's call. Right? was saying his last name, which is hyphenated last name. That's not...
Rio (02:48.842)
Just giving you a hard time, House, come on. But Tom, we really wanted to have you on here. We've known each other for a few years. I've appreciated not only the content you post, but your point of view, which I think is unique and interesting. But we really wanted an episode about the gap between what the industry says, which is a lot. And this is an industry where there's a lot of hot air, right? There's a lot of talk about AI, platforms, operating systems, and there is a lot of change, right? Let's not pretend there isn't. But none of this happens. Absolutely none of it happens.
successfully unless companies really change how they operate and how decisions get made, how teams align and how leaders behave and how it really makes people feel, right? That's really important. I think it's underplayed a lot of times, especially when look at these big, Brett, to your point, matrix, complex organizations. Tom, you've been in a room. You've been seeing these change happen, making them happen. We'd love to talk today about what that's really all about. So thanks for coming.
Tom (03:41.763)
Awesome.
Brett House (03:42.849)
Yep. I've got, so I'll start with the questions here. So, so I had an interesting quote that I thought would, would, you know, start us off. Transformation usually fails not because companies like strategy, but because they cannot convert intent into coordinated behavior. So it's sort of like the old quote strategy without execution is hallucination. Right. What do you think is the largest blocker of, of, you know, large matrix organizations or companies that have recently acquired other orgs into their, into the mothership?
Tom (03:59.65)
Yeah.
Brett House (04:12.215)
to actually be effective in terms of transformation and change management.
Tom (04:16.718)
Yeah, I mean, I think, yeah, a huge blocker and this sometimes sounds obvious when you say it out loud is that clarity upfront and then the ability to then link that through to an execution plan, right? And if I think about businesses that have been acquisitive or have been acquired and been going through change, one of the first stumbling blocks that they come up against is the inability to actually articulate, you know,
what is complicated, a complicated strategy into something that is clear and is clear and can be understood top to bottom. And when you get clarity, you then need to get alignment. And that alignment needs to be with your most senior executives, but it also needs to be those who are on the front line. And if you can't articulate what you're trying to do in a way...
both in terms of the words, in terms of the methods, that go and pick anyone on your front line and they understand what they're doing and how that connects to your overall goal, then you failed at the first hurdle.
Brett House (05:20.811)
Yeah. And would you say that strategy, making sure that everybody understands the kind of fundamental strategy, do have to break that up into pieces? Because there's organizational strategy, there's company, know, KPI, ROI oriented strategy. How do you think about that?
Tom (05:31.842)
Yep. Yep.
Tom (05:36.237)
Yeah, I mean, I think so. I think like all this is in business. I think there's a lot of buzzwords and people take huge pride in some of the more interesting stuff. so strategy, yeah, has a huge amount of huge number of component parts to it. And I'd probably hasten that and link that to the operating model piece, right? Which is people talk about strategy and operating model. And often what they really mean is, is a PowerPoint presentation for the strategy and an org chart for the operating model.
Brett House (06:04.736)
Yeah.
Tom (06:04.91)
And I think, you know, there's a bit of lack of maturity in our industry. And I think if you go outside and talk to some clients that sit, you know, work with us, they're slightly more mature in here. But fundamentally, yes, strategy has a load of different component parts to it. Yes, there is a presentation and there is a kind of essential organizing construct that you go and share out. But it is far more than that. And a good strategy has equal weighting and balance to what are you going to do to make that strategy land in the organization? So the execution of that plan.
equally with an operating model, know, strategy is one part of that. Yes, the boxes and sticks, the org chart is one part of that, but it is, you know, one part of many other parts. And when you think about the operating model and the things you need to do to make your strategy land, you've got to think about your talent. You've got to think about your performance management, KPIs, as you mentioned. Think about, you know, the culture you're trying to cultivate and encourage in your organization, how it links to...
your commercial outcomes. so I think, yeah, first challenge is people think about strategy and an op model is fairly binary things that are one offset pieces that a group of people get into a room and do and then job done, email sent, town hall done, and, know, that should just land and be delivered.
Rio (07:20.298)
Tom, I find a lot of people confuse those terms like operating model, org design, strategy. mean, it's, I think there's a lack of clarity generally and people mix and match them and don't really understand. Do you think that's true?
Tom (07:33.103)
100 % yeah. think there's a whole number of kind of points of conflation. I think operating model is, you know, have to go and do a search to figure out there's lots of different models, right? You know, pick one, doesn't really matter. An operating model describes lots of different connected components of the system. Structure reporting lines is one, but not the only part of that.
I think there's conflation around strategy and what that means. And I think there's also, you know, really pertinent to my world. There's a, there's a conflation between, transformation and optimization. And I think actually, if if you look at a lot of the, companies in our space today that talk about transformation, capital T, actually what they're doing is optimizing and restructuring. they're taking costs out.
Brett House (08:08.077)
Yep.
Tom (08:22.988)
They're maybe reorganizing the kind of the role, smashing together brands and capabilities. And maybe that sometimes feels and looks a bit like transformation. Certainly upwards, you know, when they were having to kind of report out. Yeah. Yeah.
Brett House (08:33.877)
Yeah, but it's really just tweaking and tuning something that already exists in fundamental model.
Rio (08:37.204)
People get tired of that, right? There's constant transformations, like transformation fatigue almost. I see a lot of that in industry.
Tom (08:44.076)
Yeah. And I think that's a really important word to pick up on. people, transformation fatigue, I get a bit knocked when I hear that comment. It's used fairly disparagingly by leaders to talk about the workforce and they are, know, everyone's, everyone's fatigue. And I, a little bit would, would call that out and say, if you go and talk to a 25, 30 year old in, the kind of the, the, the client teams, whatever, they're not changed fatigued per se. They're fatigued of bad change.
Right. And, and I think that the breakdown is that they're, they are recipients of to your point Rio wave after wave of real restructure. Well, they're not experiencing is a genuine reevaluation and kind of, um, Rebuilding of the organization. You know, so it's reorganizing the deck chairs, not building new shit.
Brett House (09:14.339)
Yeah.
Brett House (09:35.043)
Yeah.
Rio (09:36.32)
That's a good point, yeah.
Brett House (09:38.104)
Yeah. Yeah. And what I find, I know when I, when you're saying operating model, I was thinking that as you're taking a change strategy, let's say it's an acquisition through an organization, the operating model almost in my experience, and I've been through this more times than I can count, and A going from, from startup sort of mid-level SaaS to acquisition. You know, I was, I was part of an acquisition by TransUnion by a company called Newstar, Exolate to Nielsen. And these were examples of companies that had very tight.
very specific cultures, SaaS kind of tech forward cultures that suddenly were absorbed into much bigger animals, right? And to your point about sort of, you have this kind of overarching deck and sort of the goal, the key goals and strategic objectives around an acquisition, for example. But what I find often breaks is that it has to be sort of translated for every core function.
Right? Cause people like, I'm an operations person or I'm a marketing person or I'm a customer success person. And that strategy at a very high level, oftentimes gets lost in translation when it's brought to the specific teams themselves. And then the teams are like, well, what does it mean to me? And then you can go down even another level, that level down where like individuals within the team. And that's where things get broken. It's sort of like the.
Tom (10:46.142)
Yeah.
Tom (10:57.164)
Yeah, yeah.
Rio (10:58.624)
Well, yeah, Brett, think what Tom called us a really good point, too. So what you just said, like what it ends up meaning in practicality is just a shifting leaders are changing. It's this constant like restructuring of just reporting lines. It's not real transformation. I really like that point a lot.
Tom (11:12.75)
No, Yeah. And Brad, I think I've always kind of said, if you go and talk to the person, not necessarily the most junior, but the person furthest away from the CEO, right? In terms of levels and distance, if they can't say in sort of two or three steps, I do this, which is helping our company do that, which is linked to our vision, you failed. And I think if you're in sort of a client facing role as well, you need to be able to...
Brett House (11:24.48)
Yeah.
Brett House (11:35.628)
Yep.
Tom (11:41.902)
to articulate to your clients as well. Our company is doing this and that is gonna help you, Mr. or Mrs. Client, be better at what you do. too often, yeah, yeah, yeah.
Brett House (11:44.323)
Yeah.
Brett House (11:49.89)
Yeah. That being a very critical point, right? Because once downstream, you're not actually able even to communicate this to clients at the client management level or the sales level. That starts to have like deleterious effects on the company itself.
Tom (12:00.941)
Yeah.
Rio (12:03.712)
But it's amazing how many people can't do that, right? You ask them and they're like, well, I don't even know. And he asked them why, because they get changed all the time. And I don't even know. Like, it's hard.
Brett House (12:12.417)
or they're kind of making it up in the spot, right? And you get a lot of...
Tom (12:15.342)
Well, this is, yeah. And people fill in the blanks, right? Because people, again, I'm an optimist. I believe people are trying to do the right thing. But if you're a client leader and you're in a client pitch room or a big meeting and a client asks you, know, sorry, I've just read announcement X, what does this mean for me? The client leaders aren't normally going to go, I don't know. It's not normally their default answer. They will make an answer up. And so again, the obligation comes back on the business to say, you've got to equip your teams.
Your leaders, certainly those who are going, having critically important conversations, equipping them with information that they need. And going back to your point, Brett, that might have a few different lenses. know, are you talking to a global client or a local client? Are you talking to a client in a particular vertical or using a particular service? But as you think about communicating and making that strategy real, then you've got to be able to cut that into a really simple way that your core leaders or all kinds of teams can go, yeah, actually.
We're doing this thing. That's gonna be really good for you because of
Brett House (13:14.239)
Yeah, and you think this isn't just a calm strategy, right? This, you know, the people sometimes narrow it down to like, give me the messages, the key messages, like you're a PR, you know, leader. Would you say it's more than that? mean, because behavior doesn't change just because you've got a key messages document that says this is what it means. This is why you should care.
Tom (13:32.151)
Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. And I knew, I think we've all been in the room where you've been creating a plan, transformation plan, strategy plan, whatever. And someone comes in and they say, we need, we need a changes in comms line on that. And, and suddenly you wheel in a comms person and yeah, obviously people are brilliant by the way. But yeah, and it's like, can you create me a slide or a briefing pack or talking notes? And that's, that's part of it. But
Brett House (13:50.856)
That- that- that does some word smithing.
Tom (13:59.535)
Again, I think in the spirit of being kind of blunt and what, you know, on average the industry needs, there people who do it well, obviously, but is the obligation to think about the impact of change on a client or on a team, that's on the leaders. Now you can then lean on a comms person or a change person to help stress test that, to craft it, to maybe help you kind of build it out, but you can't outsource the responsibility to think about, what does this mean for my client, my mark, whatever? Yeah.
Brett House (14:26.851)
Team A, Team B, T at client A, client B. So you've got to, a sense, you've got to train the trainers, right? You've got to train the leaders in order to be able to communicate that sort of, that operating model, how it applies to that specific function to that specific team within the organization.
Tom (14:29.589)
That's on leaders.
Tom (14:40.046)
Yeah, there's a piece around accountability there as well, everyone says they want accountability, but do they really want it? And we've got some very senior leaders in our industry who have got roles leading big clients. They can't just expect to be spoon fed, perhaps in way inflammatory, but can't be spoon fed, kind of, what does something mean for their client? They need to be able to, the ones who take accountability for that, translating that into the actual
Brett House (15:05.472)
Yeah. That's why they were hired. That's why they get paid the big bucks, right? To be able to do that.
Rio (15:11.06)
Well, but, but agency world, I don't know agency where I think a lot of people like. Duck accountability. think, you know, the, C Y C O I A is pretty prevalent. mean, I think that's a good point you just made, Tom, you've actually called it. You're right. I really liked this. Like you've called it a couple of times how like you've seen this where companies roll out a new strategy. Then they just, you know, they don't give it enough time and maybe, know, they, maybe they missed details. Maybe the execution has been bad, but next thing you know, they'll it's broken. We're starting over. And it just, it's like, repeats again and again. Love you to talk a little bit about that. I really liked that point you made.
Tom (15:40.527)
Yeah. I mean, I think it's probably for me over the last 10 years, the number one sort of problem and frustration you see, big, big announcement. A huge amount of time is spent on creating the strategy. And there's these off-sites. We fly people around the world in global businesses. I think I did a post about this. Yeah. Everyone wants to be at the off-site. Yeah. Picture taken. We've done the new strategy. Here's the new buzzword, hashtag something. And then there's the comms team diligently put together a whole road show.
blah, blah, we all been there done that. And then, you know, that's day one. And then you look around and suddenly everyone's fallen away, all the execs have gone, you know, and are focusing on something else. And they've probably got a couple of project managers to go and make this giant shift happen. And I'm not saying one should be more important than the other, but the two halves of the equation need to be looked at, you know, in equal measure, equal balance. So yes, spend some time on creating a really good strategy for sure. But spend...
equal energy on thinking about how do you then make that stick. the routines and the rituals again at a team level, or a market level, what needs to be in place to make sure that the strategy, the structure, the products, whatever you're kind of thinking about changing or building, they stick. And that takes time. And no one likes to hear that. You can accelerate it, you can focus it, you can do sprints, but with people, back to that very early point.
And people take a while to learn new habits and behaviors. They can do it, given the right conditions. And so you need to get the time, right space. And you need to make sure those things bed in because the worst thing that can happen, and we've seen this across several examples in our industry is to a point where, know, new strategy gets announced. It's been taken, probably taken 18 months for strategy to be created. And then three months, six months down the line, it's not driving sort of radically different results. then, know, exec.
Brett House (17:35.991)
Yep.
Tom (17:36.815)
suddenly says, well, let's, let's change it. We must need a new thing. And suddenly you go from country led to client led and capability led and people have got whiplash in the organization and the frontline teams, which again, I, 98 % of the people we employ in these organizations, they're like, what's going on? And then they just start making up their own trashy cause they can't operate in a world whereby every six months there's a new thing. And so that's when you get into the really dangerous area of leaders, teams, creating their own.
Rio (17:39.85)
Let's pivot.
Tom (18:05.42)
shadow strategy, their own structure that is hidden, and they're trying to protect it. Yeah, yeah.
Brett House (18:07.203)
Yeah, and that's where you get potential fiefdoms almost by nature. So, I mean, it's sort of the same thing that kills value after acquisitions. I weak integration, you know, in your investors, your shareholders actually see it. Unresolved politics, which can be poisonous and toxic with an organization like the fiefdoms you just mentioned. Kind of unclear decision rights and where are these decisions coming from? Where are they? they?
Tom (18:28.802)
Yeah.
Brett House (18:30.007)
Are they, and oftentimes, like I find within organizations that I've been part of that have gone through this is that the kind of the culture of the organization starts getting discussed as like a belief system. And, to me that only goes so far, right? It's like the rah rah rah, wave your hands. We're all in this together. We're going to fight till the end, you know, and then, and then you, you sit back as a leader or somebody on a team and you're like, well, how, how do I actually tactically
technically implement this within my organization, which to me says there has to be kind of an operating model behind this. Just like when you're launching a product to market, there's an operating discipline and it seems, is that what's driving a lot of the failure in integration sequences?
Tom (19:06.284)
Yeah, yeah, yeah.
Tom (19:12.812)
Yeah, I I'd first actually go back to a point you just mentioned about the politics, which is, yeah, a huge, everyone talks about it, of jokes about it, but it's a huge reality in any organization, but it's definitely prevalent in scale organizations and I think compounds when you've got multiple services and multiple geographies. The amount of energy and effort and ultimately cost that is spent on
internal positioning versus sort of external value is huge. And we've all seen the research around how many hours are spent in meetings. A lot of those meetings are created for political reasons, know, of, ask, covering, creating, so I think that's key. And that leads into what I call the nodding room, which is a really dangerous dynamic I see with leadership teams where big important meeting happens, all the execs around a table or offsite, whatever.
Brett House (19:55.426)
Yeah.
Tom (20:11.054)
And everyone's like, yep, yep, that's great idea. Everyone's nodding, you know, really great. And then they all leave the room and then at best they are kind of, you know, quiet and ignore that the agreements at worst go and brief against it. And then you have, you know, corridor conversations and shadow strategies and then left, left unmanaged, you then have, you know, an entire unpicking of the decisions that made. And so you've got, you've got to, in my view, you've got to name that and you've to get your leader, your CEO or whoever's bringing that group together.
Brett House (20:24.226)
Yeah.
Tom (20:41.006)
They've got to be really strong and firm in really unearthing those difficult questions that people actually keep nodding at, but aren't actually happy with and force that conversation, disagree and commit, whatever you want to call it. And then hold those leaders to account to go and deliver that and take action if they're not delivering it. And that's difficult because we're a relationship business. So I think the politics piece is critical and shouldn't be sort of underestimated.
Brett House (20:52.792)
Yeah.
Brett House (21:06.231)
Yeah, and providing the right type of context, right, for, Brianna, you were gonna say something, but the right type of place or setting for people to be able to voice, to wear the black hat, like in the, know, kind of that classic example of six different hats, right?
Rio (21:20.304)
Yeah, but I've been in those rooms, Brett, where it's like everyone's nodding and Tom, I'm sure you've seen this before, but like a couple people there know that something's really fundamentally wrong with the strategy of what's being decided. like, yeah, you can be part of the consensus and nod or you can say something. And I've been in those rooms where like dissent was not appreciated. And I think that's a very dangerous place for company to be.
Brett House (21:30.081)
Yeah.
Brett House (21:42.454)
Yeah.
Yeah. And I find the bigger the meetings get, Ria, to your point, and this just happened, I this has happened a couple of times where we would have monthly operating meetings, right? And you'd get a whole large kind of multifunctional team. And there was a certain point, like a certain threshold, like when you cross this line of the meeting getting too large.
regardless of how it was positioned as being sort of a democratic opportunity to share your opinions and share that, know, this is the team that runs the organization. And so if you don't say it now, you're not going to say it ever. Oftentimes, Orge will put that in place as if it's going to help bring things to the surface that need to be brought to the surface. And oftentimes, your point, Rio, you just get a lot of people nodding because of just the dynamics, the power dynamics.
Tom (22:08.652)
Yeah.
Brett House (22:31.159)
the nature of large groups. Some people are less likely to speak out in large groups than others, right? So you have to, I think, sort of set up an environment where people can communicate these things that doesn't like, you know, potentially embarrass them in front of a large group and people are hesitant to.
Tom (22:39.928)
Yeah.
Tom (22:45.838)
Yeah. And you get into some really interesting stuff, And you get into, you know, obviously the psychology of meetings and people and cultural differences and geographic differences. And, you know, when you're running a global meeting like that, you know, you've got to lean in and appreciate the fact that there are, you know, inbuilt defaults, if you will, based on where people are coming from in that meeting. And so, yeah, there are some cultures that are absolutely happy to, in the room, in the moment, shout out their opinion, you know.
And we're talking on engineering. Your words. There are some cultures that are bit more reflective, and we'll say, maybe, these are the Brits typically, you who will maybe be bit more, have we thought about this? There are some cultures that wouldn't dream of saying something in the room. And so the art of running those meetings is, there's probably a bit of pre work to be done to make sure people have got a time to digest it. And some people reflect, I'm a reflector, right? So I,
Brett House (23:15.637)
New Yorkers.
Brett House (23:30.837)
Yeah, the Japanese. My wife was Japanese, yes. Exactly.
Tom (23:44.271)
I normally react very quickly, but then a day later, my brain defrags and I go, actually, here's some further thoughts. So I always appreciate, if it's a big discussion, just having a sight of some of the things to talk about. you can structure the meetings and equally, you don't always have to have everyone in every meeting. And I think sometimes you can break down, it might be two or three people who you know are going to be the ones who have the most input and feedback. so go and create a breakout with those.
people to be more efficient, doesn't matter to other people. And then you might come back to ratify it with the board of group, but give the right space and environment. So yeah, it's, it's hard because it is bit dependent on each group's dynamic, but the skill of the need.
Brett House (24:21.484)
Hey, hey.
Yeah, have you actually, what do you think about, back to that idea of the six thinking of hats, right? Like where you actually designate people in the room to play the black hat, the green hat, the blue hat. You know, there's like a creative hat. There's somebody that contradicts what, or is it too contrived?
Rio (24:40.872)
I think that could be constructive, but I've seen that work best when you have people of different level. Because the thing is, where I've seen strategies fall down, and Tom, I'd love to hear what you think about this, is where you've got people who will come to the strategy and you have people implementing the strategy. Sometimes you can have a pretty big divide between them, where the people implementing it are like, actually, no, that's not going to work. Because here's reasons A, B, and C why the strategy is fundamentally flawed.
Brett House (25:00.556)
Yeah.
Rio (25:08.768)
that you need people from the different levels in order to be giving feedback. Right. And I don't know, thoughts on that, cause I've seen a lot of times the strategy gets cooked up at, say at a, at a top level, but then like it's, it's impractical and it kind of withers on the vine after that.
Tom (25:22.52)
Yeah. And so I think, I think related to this, I think something, you know, when people say, you know, what a, what a great leaders looking like these days, I think there is a, there is a muscle that I think has always had to be there, but I think is, is, is increasingly important of, of leaders who are responsible for strategy, I say, I mean, all leaders, but certainly in this context of being able to say, well, let's zoom in and look at a bit of our organization and look at understanding how work is done. I'm not expecting every leader to understand everything. Yeah.
Brett House (25:23.939)
That's a point.
Tom (25:52.559)
vastly complex systems. everyone will come from a core area, a T-shape, M-shape, whatever. But I think a muscle that a good leader can exhibit is identifying when they're creating strategy, zooming in or taking the counsel of people where to zoom in, understand how that work is done, where the friction is, what the implications and consequences of said strategy would be. But then zoom out again and look at how that sits in terms of the broader kind of system. And having those two things
Brett House (26:16.333)
Yeah.
Tom (26:18.702)
there's two kind of frames and kind of distances in parallel becomes a really important dimension of a good leader because you have to be able to understand the consequences of the strategy and the age of
Brett House (26:29.629)
You don't have to be living in that, in that sort of deep dive, but you've got to be able to go there to understand how things are actually executed by the feet on the ground and then be able to pull out. And if you don't have that perspective, your strategy to your point Rio will die in the vine, right?
Tom (26:37.068)
Yeah. Yeah.
Tom (26:42.572)
Yeah, I think there's a bit of a catch people fall into. And this is not my words. is Indra Nooyi, the old PepsiCo CEO who talks about this. I think in today's world, whereby we are running such complex businesses, the more senior you become, the more student you need to be, right? You need to accept you don't know everything. Maybe in...
Brett House (27:04.406)
Yeah.
Tom (27:05.758)
Past generations when you were the top of the tree you knew everything but I think in today's world You know you know less as you become more senior because you're looking at such a complex web of things So that the skill you have to build is actually your point Brett is being able to say well who are the experts I can go and talk to you about one two three and how do I then go and zoom in and figure out what the right things are and then zoom back out again and it's being able to do both those things at the same time or
Rio (27:28.572)
Knowing who to talk to. That's super important. Yeah. I mean, that's, think any good leader is going to know. They're to know right away because they, you know, because like they may not be like in the weeds as much as they were because they can't, to your point a second ago, they have other responsibilities, but they, they should have their finger on the pulse of the organization well enough to know, okay, these are the real leaders that are, that are doing things that know what's going on. And if I'm going to come up with a strategy, I better get their input and their buy-in, right?
Tom (27:52.111)
Yeah, and related, I think there's something, a skill that leaders need to build around knowing where to zoom in, but also kind of where to pick into. So the reason I say that is when you're creating a strategy, and the same could be said for if you're sharing results in an earnings call or a pitch, the global
big organizations are vastly diverse in terms of services, lots of different layers. By the time you're at that senior level, you've had probably, if you ask for a deep dive about particular technology or particular service, that ask goes down five layers, six layers to people who know what they're talking about.
then comes back up again. And each time it comes back up, someone's putting their own shine and finesse on it and managing up because that's what people do, right? Yeah, people want to make sure they impress the boss. And so by the time the CEO, you know, the leader gets the state of nation presentation, it's probably like 50 % exaggerated because it's got all these kind of like, and so yeah, I think I see this right. mean, caveat, there's lots of people who don't do this and do this really well, but there is a common trap that people fall into. And you see this in in
Brett House (28:43.896)
Yeah.
Brett House (28:55.487)
Yeah, it's completely divorced from reality.
Tom (29:07.074)
earnings calls and pitches whereby leaders not dishonestly, naively are presenting this tool does this or we've got a solution around our markets that does this to a client or to investors. again, not purposefully dishonestly, but that information has been built for so many layers of exaggerated white lie truths that they believe it. And actually, you go and talk to the practitioners on the ground.
They're still stitching together, you know, 65 different systems doing something in Excel.
Brett House (29:40.011)
Is that because the practitioners are telling the leader, this just reminds me of our country, what they want to hear, know, in sycophantic, like, I'm going to tell the leader, you know, the great leader, what they want to hear, and then the leader isn't fully informed. Is that what you're
Rio (29:54.762)
Well, well, Brett, I actually, think Tom, before you answer, actually think there are people who manage up really well and there are people who manage down really well. And they're very, the best leaders do them both well. I think the worst leaders are the ones who manage up well, but suck at managing down because they will, it'll be a toxic waste dump. The org, the org they're running, they don't care. It'll be like the, everything they do will be to the, like,
Brett House (30:07.361)
Yeah.
Brett House (30:11.427)
He
Rio (30:19.368)
at the expense of the people who report them because they don't care about them. They don't know what's going on. All they care about is perception. don't know, that's having worked in big works for long time.
Brett House (30:25.449)
Is it well is it will really do you think you think it's because of bandwidth because I've been in organizations P back startups. Now you don't think it is where the leaders so obsessed with new CEO comes on new leadership team they're so obsessed with integrating with that group that they're they're lose they're not able to just pay attention to.
Rio (30:29.928)
No, it's not, it's not, it's not, it's, it's hyper.
Rio (30:45.088)
I think a good leader will be able to do both. But Tom, I cut you off. Go ahead.
Tom (30:47.736)
Yeah. I think it's, I agree. I think for sure there are moments in time in the BAU cycle around results. And then when you've got changes like new leaders or clients that create a pension and that, you know, we all know that when we're stressed and lacking time, the worst versions of ourselves pop out. But I think generally as an underlying behavior skill of a good or bad leader in being able to do that. And it comes back to
Brett House (30:47.97)
Yeah.
Tom (31:16.59)
I think some of it comes back to the ability of that leader to create the right culture. And culture, again, is something that often gets banded around as a bit of a wishy washy kind of, let's put some values on the wall, let's do wellness. And those things are important, artifacts of it. But again, a good leader will say, well, what culture do we want to cultivate? You can't just create a culture. What have we got and where do want to build? What are the things we want to dial up, dial down? And part of that is around
Brett House (31:27.683)
Yeah.
Tom (31:44.111)
you know, the things we've been talking about, which is how do we want our teams to manage up and down? How do you want information to be shared and creating a, an environment, you know, the whole radical can look at a piece where actually, you your, your teams feel, yeah, your teams feel comfortable giving and receiving feedback, which is, you know, that might not be perfect. And that applies up and down the chain to then get to a culture whereby, you know, genuine honesty, even if sometimes that's a little bit uncomfortable for, for, you know, the moment.
Brett House (31:55.502)
Radical Candid, great book.
Brett House (32:06.305)
Yeah.
Tom (32:13.814)
generally leads to better results in the long run.
Brett House (32:15.947)
Yeah, well, one thing that I, we actually experienced that done really well where when it came to company values, when it came to company strategic direction, it was actually kind of a group, like think of it as senior leadership team that's beyond just the Uber executive team. That's actually coming up with these things in kind of group sessions so that they're not being told what, you know.
what your cultural values are, what your strategic objectives are, you know, and so they get voted up and so they feel like they're part of the process of actually building the process. Yeah, so critically important. then, yeah, then to me, think the things were breakdown where there's a lack of, you you start to implement some of these things and the communication starts to slow down and it starts to stop and people are like, well, where did that thing go? Where did that particular, you know?
Tom (32:40.706)
Yeah, yeah.
Tom (32:46.466)
Yeah. Yeah.
Rio (32:47.177)
important.
Tom (33:02.37)
Yeah. And maybe picking up on your kind of leadership point, I think there is a, if I think through kind of where some of these, know, where these things fail and succeed, if you think of the organization really simplicity, you know, you're senior exec and exec team, they are
typically all aligned because they're all in the same room. And quite frankly, they're paid enough to absorb the pain and friction. You've got your frontline who, as we talked about before, actually, you know, going to ask most 30 year olds who are driving companies, they are dead up for change and they want to do this stuff. They don't want to be sat and excelled in. You've got this sort of group of what I'd call maybe middle management or maybe sort of that sort of extended leadership team who probably have grown up in a world whereby they're being incentivized for behaviors that we now don't want. They probably haven't been involved in all the kind of really senior kind of alignment sessions.
But they're the ones who are, know, don't know, capability leaders, leading big clients, maybe markets. They're the ones who have to stand up in front of the teams and explain the change, explain the culture, explain what we're doing. And if that group of people aren't cohesive, excuse me, unaligned and able to, you know, back to our earlier points, articulate the what and the why, create that culture that, you know, cultivates the right up and down. Because they are, they are the
the gatekeepers of information both ways. And so that middle management or sort of senior management layer, I think is such a under invested area in organizations because they become, they're the communicators of the messages, they're the gatekeepers of information up and down. And if you don't get that bunch of people working, know, it's cohesively around kind of the culture you want to create, then you've got a real problem.
Brett House (34:21.377)
The connective tissue, Yeah.
Brett House (34:31.906)
Yeah.
Brett House (34:46.627)
Do you think that...
Rio (34:46.72)
Yeah, that's a really good point. like, guess, Tom, turning to like the advertising industry, specifically looking at holdcoasing as you have years of experience working at senior levels, this is something we really want to dig into. We recently published an article in Cigland Noise that I wrote about kind of holding companies in their transition to more operating different operating model, like more like operating companies having operating systems, maybe even, and how this is seems to be the direction like many, much of the industry is trending. From your perspective, like
Is this realistic and how far away are these orgs which are big and complex and multinational? How far away are they from doing anything like this?
Tom (35:22.894)
Well, so another caveat, there are some that are doing brilliantly. There's outliers. I think if we're talking in general, then I think probably further away than they say, and probably further away than they realize. And, you know, two steps. A lot of that is back to what we talking about before, I think, in terms of the senior leaders quite possibly believe
when they're in the room, that they are further ahead. And that's a combination of the way information is being packaged up, the fact they have to sell a little bit farther ahead to satisfy various kind of stakeholder groups. But I think probably in many of the large global firms, certainly the ones that I've been in and seen and worked in and around, I think the reality is still a little bit far off.
That's not to say there's not pockets of excellence. And I think in every company there'll be, there'll be clients where it's nailed, but that'll often be because you've got heroic efforts of people who want to make change at a local level. You've got perhaps integration happening because of sort of relationships and favors being called internally versus like systematized integration. You've got technology working because they work around the clock to make it work. is, is the kind of the, the model is advanced as people say it is.
I don't think it is. And I think, you know, if we go and go back to our earlier conversation, you know, that's I think, because the strategies are all probably sound. But then getting that strategy to be delivered across the organisation end to end requires, you know, energy, effort and investment in some form, is often lacking. Not in all cases, but yeah.
Brett House (37:12.065)
Yeah, yeah. And the hold codes have grown from, I mean, where you had a lot of acquisition, right? Classic example, a lot of point solutions that were part of those acquisitions, a lot of sort of R &D that's done in sort of innovation centers of excellence, but it's not unified around a central, let's say product org, right? Where it's centralized and you're trying to bring all that together plus huge volumes of headcount.
with the FTEs. And this kind of reminded me of it. seems like change just generally in the advertising industry, in the tech industry, obviously at Holdcos, just the change is more frequent, higher volume.
potentially even more radical with AI. I was reading a Harvard Business Review article that said that employees are seeing five to seven times more change. And this is recent today than they were seven years ago. Yeah, and so the adoption to that change from a correlation perspective has dropped as well from 72 % of support change to about 42 % of employees. And to me, holdcos are a perfect example.
Tom (38:03.692)
Yeah.
Rio (38:05.428)
Doesn't surprise me, yeah.
Tom (38:10.402)
Yeah.
Brett House (38:19.421)
of like massive amounts of change, disruption, technology integration, trying to unify point solutions in teams that come across from acquisition in many cases. How do you coach agencies? How have you thought about that as a transformation leader?
Tom (38:33.336)
Yeah.
So yeah, so I think that's all definitely all true. I think there's a few things. I would say, and again, these are the obvious things, but say them out loud and hopefully they resonate. is transformation. think there's a paradigm shift in play already and needs to be accelerated. Which transformation, certainly the big tech transformations used to be big program start to end and big CapEx projects, blah, blah, blah.
everyone says done and we'll revisit that technology again in five years time. That's not the case. know, the stats you just talked about, because you know, every week there's a new model released in a new piece of AI and everyone's got their water on it now. So I think part of the job of people leading transformations is as well as to deliver any specific kind of initiatives or kind of programs of the moment is to build
easy said than done, a culture or behavior adaptability, because we are going to be going through this for a while. And so it needs to be, know, integration is a great point. The business, have been and probably will be acquisitive. We've got to build it into kind of our rhythm. And that's the industry we're in. you change is going to be here. We are, I think, wonderfully positioned.
I talk to my friends who don't work in this industry, you we're right at the forefront of disruption. It's really exciting. We're going to make it feel exciting. And to make it feel exciting, we've got to build a kind of a slightly different like paradigm and culture, as I say, how we work and our rhythms of business around, this sort of always on change, being more adaptable and what doesn't help there. And again, which is where I think we need to think things through is certainly the list of companies, know, quarterly results.
Tom (40:27.63)
annual results drive so much of the rhythm. Every quarterly result requires a bit of a reset and mini strategy. It's almost like there's a sprint of transformation between each one. I think there's opportunities to rethink how we do that. I think the ones that are winning have a more longer term, consistent approach to that. it's fine to have my views, fine to have a path that changes, it's fine to find a course correct. As long as people have a...
Brett House (40:36.322)
Yep.
Tom (40:55.19)
clear vision of this, of the high level vision, right? And it back to our earlier point of if your teams can stand up and say, this is where we're going, this is the sort of business we're going to become, these are the sort of things we're going to do, this is sort of how it's going to work. The path they choose to get there, whether they're using tool A or tool B becomes less consequential. Where that stat you talked about in terms of everyone's receiving so much change becomes a problem is when there isn't that North Star.
Brett House (41:11.512)
Yeah.
Tom (41:19.374)
Because then all that happens is people feel they're being buffeted around zigzag, kind of flip-flopped, and people then get disenfranchised. The firm gets accused of not knowing where they're going. so going all the way back to that first thing we were talking about, clarity of sort vision and strategy in a way that people can understand that's clear enough and broad enough that, you know, whether it's tool A or tool B tomorrow, whether we're using capable, like that sort of is a, we get there versus where we're going.
Brett House (41:47.938)
Yeah.
Tom (41:47.948)
And I think enough is given to that.
Rio (41:48.34)
Yes. So Tom, I think people like outside of the industry or let's say outside of agencies and holding companies typically underestimate how they are actually very good at changing. There's been multiple iterations. mean, I can't tell you how many times, you know, my career, you know, like goes back 25 years, people say, like this is in-housing is going to destroy agencies. So guess what? It didn't, you know, they fought back and they figured it out. And like, it's like, they're really good at that. mean, the best, and it's funny, I had this analogy, like they're like,
Tom (42:09.548)
Yeah.
Rio (42:17.618)
agencies like cockroaches, they would survive nuclear war, they'd figure out a way, they'd evolve. So think people underestimate that. But that said, mean, Brett, to your point, changes never happen as quickly and maybe AI, maybe this time is different. don't know, thoughts on that? How impactful will this be on the model, on the way work gets done, on the FTE model? Curious, get your thoughts.
Tom (42:19.726)
Yeah.
Tom (42:38.926)
So, yeah, a few things. So maybe not a cockroach, but something like whack-a-mole. think, yeah, there's always something coming where we can... Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. And I think maybe to continue the analogy that the frequency of whack-a-mole things is coming, is increasing, right? And the commercial models, the way in which partners and the ecosystems are evolving is all accelerating. So those things have been there. And I think, you know, the...
Brett House (42:45.155)
We're gonna put that in the title of this episode. Agencies are like cockroaches.
Rio (42:46.161)
Ha ha.
Tom (43:08.098)
role of new technologies is not new, know, fax to internet to mobile to digital, it's all stuff, but the pace of that and the distance between each is increasing. But I think my kind of personal view on this would be that what we're seeing is that the pace and attention that AI is getting, rightly or wrongly, is surfacing and acting as a catalyst to solve some structural challenges that the industry has had way before this AI.
Brett House (43:37.323)
Yep, these changes had to be made anyways.
Tom (43:38.094)
You all right?
So, know, to your point, know, in housing, offshoring, know, technology, automation, you know, services, spinning up services, but all those things have been happening for decades, but we've been able to manage it by sort of lurching one. I think what's now happening is the pace of that and the depth of that is such, which you can't avoid anymore. And so we're now having to lean into genuinely address things like, okay, if, you know, 30, 40, 50 % of work today is going to be done differently.
Rio (43:41.205)
Yeah.
Tom (44:10.574)
How do I charge that? How do I get rewarded that by clients? Yeah. The commercial conversation is, has to happen now. How do I, you know, how do I govern international property and, new, all those kinds of things, which have been bubbling away. I mean, I've been in rooms for years where we talked about, you know, these kinds of questions, but now they are unavoidable questions that have to be answered in, in the near term. I think, yeah. And I think, yeah, there's, there's, you know, things, things that are also coming out of wash that have been under invested in.
Brett House (44:13.911)
Yep, your revenue model.
Rio (44:16.021)
Good one.
Rio (44:31.338)
Can't be swept under the rug anymore, right?
Tom (44:39.256)
was talking to a client about this this week is one talent planning. I think our industry is really mature in this where we have always had services that are emergent, services that are growing, services that are in structural decline. And the industry has always seemed to address that by hiring a load of new capabilities over here and firing a load of capabilities over there, rather than having a three year workforce plan that says, why don't we take some of these people that are in that team that's declining, retrain, redeploy.
Brett House (45:00.397)
Yeah.
Tom (45:07.692)
and move them there. You avoid the hiring and firing cost, you retain the institutional knowledge, and you have a much better kind of place for everyone to work. I think talent planning, and then I guess it goes back to the point around operating model. The earlier conversation is these things are new things that are all that you need to look at, but they're happening now at a scale, breadth and depth that means that you've got no choice but to face into them because other people are eating their lunch.
Brett House (45:25.783)
Yeah. Yeah.
Brett House (45:33.924)
Yeah, exactly. And you mentioned that indie agencies and PE-backed firms might have an advantage in this play. And I wonder with PE firms, do you see that, kind of a leading question here, do you see that indie agencies, can see, so I'd love to hear your perspective on that, PE-backed firms, is there a bit of short-termism that forces, you know,
Tom (45:39.703)
Ahem.
Tom (46:01.389)
Yeah.
Brett House (46:01.592)
thought forces action that may not be the best long term strategic action just simply because of the price, the pressure that these companies are under.
Tom (46:08.878)
Yes. So I think with the Indies, yeah, to your point, think, yeah, a lot of them, not all of them, they've got less of that sort of structural debt, less of the competing P &Ls, the legacy brands, the personality matrix kind of stuff. So they can act more like integrated businesses, probably because they are more like integrated businesses. Yeah. Yeah. And then I think PE, know, PE is interesting, right? On one hand, you don't have the reporting out to the street.
Brett House (46:20.546)
Yeah.
Brett House (46:26.349)
Just from the get go, they're almost built that way.
Tom (46:36.814)
every quarter, which as we talked about a minute ago, has a whole set of of kind content. Yeah. And so the time horizon is perhaps longer, you know, a couple of years, but the expectation is greater, I would say. I think that
Rio (46:40.98)
Big advantage in some ways,
Brett House (46:52.001)
Yeah, you're still reporting out. You're just not reporting out to the street. And so you're dealing with.
Rio (46:55.508)
Well, you've got three to five years to do something, but that do so, that's going to be a big event, right? It's not going to be just a good quarter, right? It's going to be, there's going to be an exaggerated spin-off or something.
Tom (46:55.714)
Yeah.
Tom (46:59.372)
Yeah, yeah. I think what it does, and this is anecdotal, but I think if you look at a lot of the
Tom (47:13.553)
the P.E. space is full of operators who have come from not just advertising, but all over the And I think there is a certain level of maturity around what it takes to drive some of these things and the ability to come into a medium advertising business with the relentless focus on value creation. And they are, if you talk about creating clarity, creating focus, you go into a room with a P.E. person.
And you can't afford not to be focused and clear on what you're doing. And I think there is a benefit to that. there's pros and cons to any and all of the options. I think
Brett House (47:44.152)
Yeah.
Brett House (47:51.524)
Do they have the patience to train and to change for change management? mean, what I've seen in my own experience is that if a person is not, let's say a person that's, or a team is not sort of fit for the specific job at hand today and we need to shift them to the job at hand tomorrow, right? Oftentimes there's zero patience with any sort of internal education. And so what do they do? Yeah, PE firms. And I've seen it in my own experience. And so what do they do is they just fire.
Tom (48:07.757)
Yeah.
Rio (48:14.014)
With PE firms or?
Brett House (48:20.144)
They go right to fire because there's no time for training and development in transformation like that.
Rio (48:23.604)
Yeah, it's funny, Brad, I've had a bunch of clients and partners who've gotten bought by PE over the years. It's interesting. mean, there's been a couple that have had great outcomes. Like at Marketo, for example, I remember I worked with them for years. They came in, they got rid of the entire sales team. I mean, they sacked everyone. But you know what? I don't think they were very good, to be honest. They brought in a bunch of better ones.
Tom (48:46.882)
This is what I was gonna... Yeah.
Rio (48:47.936)
They grew it. And the next thing you know, they got, they got acquired by Adobe. So amazing outcome for like, for, for, for really everyone involved except, you know, people got like, unfortunately, but like, but I, but I worked for a big toy company leverage leverage, leverage acquisition saddle with loads of debt that I think they would have actually made it, but they ended up liquidating because, because of the PE firms. I've seen some really bad outcomes, PE firms. Sorry, Tom cut you off.
Brett House (48:56.791)
Yeah.
Tom (49:12.364)
No, I think I was gonna agree with what you were saying at the end. I think, yes, probably in general, but I think probably it points to the fact that again, without being too damning, and there's obviously pockets of excellence. There's a lot of people who are in senior leadership roles who haven't got to the operational maturity or business maturity to do what a PDF firm wants. so are they, do they have the patience? Not necessarily.
But are they putting in the best people to do the best thing to return on the Capitol? Then probably. And is there an onus on, you know, is there a learning or an onus on people who are in or going to be in those situations to really think about the right people? Then yeah. And what they'll do is they'll come in again and create that focus. And it's a fairly binary, what's the best thing to do for, you know, X time period and ROI. And maybe there's a happy middle ground we'll get to. But I think if you flip back into the whole co-space,
then I think a lot of decisions, because that politics point we talked about, it just gets gummed up. you know, things that a P firm would take days, if not weeks to make a decision on, they take months and years. Yeah.
Brett House (50:15.979)
Yeah, whereas the PE firm has absolute clarity, right? Yeah. so it's gummed up because of just old operational models, old human capital models, politics.
Rio (50:28.298)
And the politics, right, just.
Tom (50:28.842)
Yeah. Politics, politics, lack of, know, politics is, you know, from an exit point of view, lack of accountability. And, know, I've worked in, you know, in many firms and around firms where people want to make a decision, but no one knows who can. And just again, really simple. Yeah. Yeah.
Brett House (50:44.379)
Yeah, that's a key point. That's a critical point. Like, as you talk a lot about, you know, sort of getting shit done, I used to give a GSD t-shirt award out, the Get Shit Done leader on my team, right? And, you know, easier said than done. And what I've noticed is when I've gone from sort of, let's say, mid-market SaaS or tech into much larger companies, which I told you a couple of those examples, I found that the challenge of moving into a super-matrixed organization and trying to get shit done,
Rio (50:52.946)
Love it. Yeah.
Brett House (51:12.257)
because it was almost like accountability got lost. Like you'd have to work across three or four or five different people, maybe two or three different teams with a lot of politicking and sort of testing and just to get something simple done.
Tom (51:16.3)
Yes, yeah, yeah.
Tom (51:22.508)
Yeah.
Tom (51:26.022)
Yeah, and you come back to operating model piece. Again, part of the big challenges we see with structures is reorgs are announced. agency group is moving from a market model to a client model or a cluster model or a capability model. And there's a new org chart and typically it's got matrix reporting lines everywhere.
But then the piece of work hasn't been done to say, okay, for X decision, which person in that org chart, and if you've got two bosses, you which one of them or both of them can make the decision. And if you then scale up to tens of thousands of people doing very different things, if you're trying to sign off some investment, if you're trying to, you know, do a deal with a client and get some commercials agreed, it's actually just really difficult to understand, who makes that decision? And then layer it.
Brett House (52:15.053)
Yeah.
No, you don't know where all the bodies are buried. You gotta bring 35 people into a call to kiss.
Tom (52:20.386)
yeah. layer in the politics. Yeah, layer in the politics. And then also the other reality, which is, we have, you in many of our, know, of the firms in this industry, new CEOs and senior leaders every two years. So got new transformation every year, you got new CEO every two years. Like, it's trying to understand like, you know, mud slipping through your fingers in terms of where is the decision made and who should be.
Rio (52:44.852)
Well, sometimes like people don't want to make the decision because you make a decision, you're sticking your, you're sticking your head out, right? mean, sticking your head out, you get, you get cut off.
Tom (52:49.902)
Yeah, and you can definitely play the system and defer and people talk about wanting accountability, but quite a lot of people don't want the actual accountability because they realize the buck stops with them. that is something that I think as you start to roll out a new structure, you've got to be really clear on the accountability, who makes decisions, who's accountable for that. And then equally, the other piece of that is consequences.
If you've made someone accountable for decision and they make the wrong decision, then there's a consequence for that. And yeah, there's a training, there's a, and then you've to think that through.
Rio (53:23.232)
Looking at the different kind of like in the industry, like, okay, so you have your legacy holdcos, right? You've got your kind of your big Indies, like, know, like your Horizon, Stagwell, I guess, couple of good examples, right? And then you've got your, you know, PE back kind of like insurgents, right? There's a lot of them, right? And then, and then maybe I guess the fourth category might even be like your, you know, maybe the Dark Horses, maybe like your Accenture Songs, who my guess is they make immediate acquisition in your future. Deloitte Digital, can probably, you know, let's say the digital.
Tom (53:44.782)
Yeah.
Brett House (53:51.245)
consulting.
Rio (53:51.76)
let's say digital consultancies that are becoming more like agencies every day. So out of those four, which one are you most interested in? Which one would you bet on? Or anything you want to call out in that.
Tom (54:04.782)
I mean, I think it's going to be interesting, right? Because it's happening so far. I think the big Indies, I think really exciting space right now. They've got enough scale to be valuable to the partners in the ecosystem, because a lot of this has been driven by very few partners in the ecosystem. And so you've got to have enough scale to matter to some of those partners.
Brett House (54:26.147)
Yeah. And this is an FTE scale. This isn't people scale necessarily this because they're
Tom (54:29.87)
People scale, I mean, they scale with client spend, client billings, know, that kind of volume in the market. Cause you know, if you're going to go into space with some of the partners, you need to have a scale. But they've got the agility because of, you know, ownership, shock, share and behaviors to, to, to, to move with some of that quicker. So I think there's going be some really interesting space and work from those in those spaces.
Brett House (54:34.551)
Yeah
Brett House (54:47.107)
Yeah. So, should we move to quick hits? do think? So, yeah, so this is when we're going to just a little rapid fire around, you know, to end the episode. So what's the biggest illusion large agencies still believe about themselves?
Rio (54:51.04)
That's two quick hits.
Tom (54:56.14)
Yep.
Tom (55:05.802)
General statement, I'd say that a lot of the large networks, operating companies, holding companies, whatever they call themselves, I think still feel and act like scale is their single moat. And it can be important, it is important still, but it's also a big cost structure, having that big scale. And I think the firm's growing right now, back to our previous point.
Brett House (55:27.159)
Yeah.
Tom (55:31.542)
are probably ones who have fundamentally changed the model, not just growing the same thing to be bigger.
Rio (55:36.97)
Tom, what kills transformation faster? Bad strategy, slow execution, or something else entirely?
Tom (55:42.639)
I would flip that. rather have a poor or not poor, a mediocre strategy, but executed versus a brilliant strategy that took 18 months to create, was redundant before it got launched, and then no effort was put into it. Yeah. I've seen so many brilliant pieces of thinking and brilliant people, and it doesn't go anywhere.
Brett House (55:55.416)
Yeah.
Brett House (56:08.129)
Yeah, it's a sort of balancing act between like readiness and actual execution.
Tom (56:11.63)
Yeah, yeah. And I would say, you know, there are, there are only so many ways to skin a cat. So anyone comes to think of structure, like just pick a model and make it stick and make it work.
Brett House (56:24.001)
Yeah. So, so what is one thing that leaders want to say they want? We've talked a lot about leadership in this podcast, but actually resist doing.
Tom (56:36.974)
I'd go back to my earlier point, accountability. I think everyone says they want accountability. And then actually when the ACID test comes and it applies to them, you know, I think sometimes they aren't as keen enough for it as maybe they said originally.
Brett House (56:54.103)
move the goal posts.
Rio (56:56.038)
I think I know the what are you going to say to this one, but curious to hear it. What's more dangerous right now, moving too fast or moving too slow?
Tom (57:04.174)
Obviously too slow with the, I guess, caveat that slow and wrong, sorry, fast and wrong is still wrong, right? And so move fast, but be purposeful and clear on what you're trying to do and break it up. Don't try and the ocean as well. know, that's, guess the sub point to that is move fast with focus, do a few things in really well, then move on to the next. Don't try and do everything all at once.
Brett House (57:22.977)
Yeah.
Rio (57:30.336)
I like that.
Brett House (57:30.465)
Yep. So, so fill in the blank, the future agency CEO will be more like a and less like a
Tom (57:38.572)
The future agency CEO will be more like a system integrator orchestrator than a client or creative director.
Brett House (57:50.221)
There we go. That's awesome.
Rio (57:51.232)
like that. So Tom, how can people get a hold of you if they want to reach out to you, connect, read any of your work, talk to you about stuff?
Tom (57:58.862)
Yeah, hit me up on LinkedIn. It's probably the easiest thing. I've got a website that I blog on. Happy to chat about any things we talked about today or anything else, of course.
Brett House (58:09.059)
Great. Well, thanks, Tom, for joining us today. This has been an awesome conversation. Just under an hour. This is short for us, but, you know, thrilled to talk to you. And for everybody that made it this far, visit us at www.signalandnoise.ai. Follow us, subscribe, and listen to all of our episodes on YouTube, Spotify, and Apple Podcasts. And we will see you next time. Thanks, everybody.
Tom (58:12.13)
Thank you.
Rio (58:12.906)
Totally.
Tom (58:32.6)
Thank very much for me.
Rio (58:33.952)
Thank you.
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