How do you create a business where both extroverts and introverts can thrive?

Zsuzsanna Recsey is CEO at the community engagement agency, Standing on Giants. Previously an executive coach, she became CEO 4 years ago and has grown the business from 25 to 60 people.

In this episode, Zsuzsanna shares how she:

• Has embedded a culture of resilience, emotional intelligence and coaching through individual and team programmes
• Builds trust by always assuming that her team, clients and stakeholders have the best of intentions
• Makes sure the leadership team consistently demonstrates their values in all day-to-day activities
• Has a process to quickly identify and address behaviour that doesn't align with their values
• Has created an inclusive environment so introverts can contribute as much as extroverts
• Creates space for reflection so they can all always learn from what they’ve done

Zsuzsanna’s thoughtful and reflective approach continues to create a high-performing team and a high-performing business. She’s not the typical Jazz Hands agency CEO.

How do you set the ethos of your entire business just from its name?

Sam Fenton-Elstone is CEO & Co-Founder at Anything is Possible. He’s grown his agency to 65 people in just 6 years, winning almost 40 awards along the way.

In this episode, Sam shares how he:

• Embeds the idea that ‘life is better when anything is possible’ across every aspect of the business
• Gets the right balance between having structure and boundaries, and granting autonomy
• Sets the business up so autonomous team members can make good decisions as quickly as possible - and so the business benefits from collective intelligence
• Constantly strives to build a better, more exciting, more inclusive agency compared to the norm
• Runs the business like a university with a disproportionate spend on L&D and a strong Alumni network
• Encourages everyone to push themselves forward in a way that’s right for them - enabling the team to collectively operate at their highest possible output

Sam isn’t interested in Anything is Possible becoming a big agency. Instead, he wants them to be a great agency with everyone doing their best ever work whilst there.

How do you maintain an entrepreneurial spirit in a global marketing agency?

Ian Millner is Co-Founder & Global Chair at Iris, a business he started 25 years ago and which he’s helped grow to 1000 people across 17 countries.

In this episode, Ian shares how he:

• Achieved the right balance between enjoying the journey and heading towards a shared destination
• Brought together the right team with the right chemistry at the very start - which naturally attracted clients
• Created a shared ownership structure to drive motivation and loyalty within the team (peaking at 50 shareholders)
• Allowed people to follow their passions and dreams by backing their ideas for new ventures and opening in new locations
• Created a sense of excitement and being together on a big caper within the business
• Navigated taking outside investment and the impact this had on culture

Ian humbly talks about his incredible journey, how it unfolded, and what he did to get his team to be high-performing.

How do you create and maintain a culture to enable happy and high-performing teams?

Jane Slimming is Founder and CEO of Zeal. She’s been running the agency for 14 years.

In this episode, Jane shares how she:

• Defined their values on day #1 and consistently embeds these into everything they do
• Allows people to progress their careers based on their unique factors of success
• Is very transparent about business performance, no matter how badly they’re doing
• Gets people to disagree with her and then actively praises them when correct to do so
• Launched the Zeal Bucket List to push people out of their comfort (and make their personal dreams come true)
• Spearheaded Zeal to win the award for Best Agency Culture

Jane was a great podcast guest with a lot of ‘zeal’. Her quote about what’s worse than having a hole in the team is truly memorable!

How do you maintain a high-performing team when growing from zero to 100 people

Danny Bluestone is Founder and CEO of Cyber-Duck. He started the agency in 2005 and grew it to 100 people. Last year they were acquired by CACI.

In this episode, Danny shares how he:

- Balanced the competing needs of financial performance and the all-important people aspects

- Built a culture around adaptability, accountability, selflessness and having an entrepreneurial spirit

- Embedded the right type of behaviours both when the business was small and then when it became larger

- Implemented a recruitment process as rigorous as Google’s, based on their three pillars of exceptional talent

- Created a mission for each individual in the team aligned to their business plan

- Recruited the wrong people in the early days and had to deal with a large-scale team rebellion

Danny talks candidly about what worked well and what didn’t, during his almost 20-year agency journey.

How do you get everyone in a large business to be high-performing?

Vanella Jackson was Global CEO of Hall & Partners for 13 years, leading a business with a total revenue of $130m.

In this episode, Vanella shares how she:

- Applied a ‘learn, stretch and grow’ ethos to underpin high performance across the business

- Made sure people felt valued and supported across 100s of team members

- Maintained an entrepreneurial spirit within a large, networked agency

- Identified her allies, the people who would always tell her the truth about what’s going on

- Got everyone pointing in the same direction with a purpose and vision mapped back to their roles

- Liberated herself from self-criticism and then worked to liberate others

Vanella signs off our conversation with a challenge for all business leaders - listen to find out what this is!

Welcome to Human Powered, the new podcast about creating a high-performing agency or consultancy business.

In the first episode, our host, Trenton Moss, explains why he's launching the podcast in conjunction with his bestselling book, also called Human Powered.