Leading In The Time Of Virus
"FEARLESS CREATIVE LEADERSHIP" PODCAST - TRANSCRIPT
Episode 131: Adam Tucker
Hi. I’m Charles Day. I work with creative and innovative companies. I coach and advise their leaders to help them maximize their impact and grow their business.
This episode is part of Season 2 - which we’ve sub-titled, “Leading In The Time Of Virus”.
In these conversations we discover how some of the world’s most innovative and creative leaders are adapting their leadership to our new reality.
These people are among the world’s best problem solvers.
This episode is a conversation with Adam Tucker of Ogilvy and WPP. It was recorded just before the events in Minneapolis took place and the subsequent protests that are now spreading around the world.
Leadership is not about trying to be the loudest or the toughest or the smartest.
It is about caring about the people you lead. About being human.
During our conversation Adam talked about three questions that he thinks have become critical.
Are you okay? Are you really okay? How can we help?
As the world catches fire, these questions become more important every day.
Here’s Adam Tucker.
Charles: (01:15)
Adam, welcome to Fearless. Thanks so much for coming on the show.
Adam Tucker: (01:18)
Oh, thanks for having me, Charles. Great to be here.
Charles: (01:21)
Tell us where you are. Where are you in hibernation or in quarantine, and who are you with?
Adam Tucker: (01:26)
Okay. I'm on Long Island, outside of New York City with my wife, Jules, and my three children; Jack, who's 13, Olivia, who's 10, and Millie, who's 8. And, of course Marty, our Welsh Terrier, a two-year-old, crazy dog. And I apologize, if you hear little girls' voices from the next room, Olivia, my 10-year-old is practicing her year-end presentation to school, which is tomorrow, so...
Charles: (01:56)
Oh, wow. Big moment.
Adam Tucker: (01:57)
Big moment, big moment. Of course, done virtually via Zoom, but all seems to be going well.
Charles: (02:03)
How's homeschooling? What's that been like for you and your wife and for your kids?
Adam Tucker: (02:09)
It's actually gone a lot better than expected. The kids need a little bit of support in just helping structure things, but I've been pleasantly surprised at how much they've stepped up, owned their own diary. They can get on the Zoom themselves. They're handling the work on their own. So in some ways, they've become quite independent. We've all kind of found our little spaces to work from. And through the day, we have breakfast together and then we'll take a break at lunchtime, and then of course have dinner together. So in some ways, the family dynamics have been better than ever, I must admit. So it's had some positive effects.
Charles: (02:54)
It's extraordinary, isn't it, the number of different kinds of experiences people have had living through this pandemic? I think for some people, as you've just described, it can be a real strengthening experience. Other people, obviously, have gone through tragedy or real difficulty in many ways. The diversity has struck me, actually, as I've talked to different people.
Adam Tucker: (03:11)
It's true. I mean, I have to say, just because of our schedules, and my wife and I both work and the kids have active schedules, we don't spend a lot of time together during the week. And we've honestly spent more time together than we've ever done before, and we're not ready to kill each other. We're having a good time. We have dedicated family time every night. We're playing games and watching movies and going for a walk. And I've taught the kids to play poker, so... help enhance their math skills, and we-
Charles: (03:44)
And your retirement potentially. Who knows, right?
Adam Tucker: (03:48)
Exactly. Exactly. And we've given them responsibility for cooking one meal a week, so they're trading off. So for what we're all going through as a country, there are some positive things that can come out of this. So that part's been good. It's worked out better than expected.
Charles: (04:08)
How's business? What's business like for you? Tell the audience what you're responsible for because you have a very interesting, sort of, hybrid position, don't you? You sort of sit across multiple areas of responsibility and multiple entities.
Adam Tucker: (04:22)
I do. I do. So I'm a global client leader for WPP looking after two of our top global clients. And then for Ogilvy, I lead our global advertising capability and practice. And so I have a thought leadership role as well as a direct client-facing role. And, look, it's been incredibly intense and it's been, I have to say, incredibly hard; but I think, as well, incredibly positive. We've learned a ton. I think we've responded incredibly well. We've been very focused on our people and our clients. And, in many ways, I would say more focused than we've ever been before.
And so I've always believed that this business is a people business and it's based on relationships and people make the difference. And in a situation where we're all going through this together, I've just been amazed at how much everybody's pulled together, and our conversations with each other and with clients are that much more real and honest and intimate. And they're much more about how we're doing and how we're getting on through this and whether or not we're okay, rather than how are we going to solve the latest business problem? Of course, we get to that. But I think all of that humanity, despite what everybody's going through, is a positive for the business.
Charles: (06:02)
When you are responsible for as many stakeholders as you are, how do you create and maintain focus for the people that are reporting to and working with you?
Adam Tucker: (06:10)
It's a great question, and it's one that I've been experimenting with as I've gone through this and learning along the way. It's interesting, just in March, as the quarantine was happening, I was just about to go on five overseas business trips over the course of two months, which was really going to be my dedicated time with clients and teams across the globe between March and June. And I had a pretty rigorous schedule to do that, and of course, had to drop that completely and have replaced it with Zooms and calls and have had to be a lot more thoughtful about structure and structuring that and make sure I've got focus and impact time. The days have been far longer. They start at 6:00 or 7:00 and they go until 8:00, 9:00 at night.
But I have to say, I've found that in some ways, particularly through Zoom, we've been able to achieve better communication and more impact, both with clients and teams, than we had before. As an example, a couple of weeks ago, I could feel from my conversations with the team members that they were feeling drained, they were feeling down, and they needed a bit of some inspiration. And so I scheduled a global Zoom with one of my clients with 60 team members across the globe. And it was 7:00 AM in the U.S., so we were doing mimosas; and Australia was 10:00 PM and they were drinking wine and cocktails. And literally, we had 25 different countries, 60 different people, and we had the client come in and talk for 20 minutes on the state of the business and where they thought things were going.
And it was the single-most inspirational thing I've done in years. The feedback that I've had from the team, from the client, about being involved in that was fantastic. And part of me thought to myself, "Why the heck have we never done something like this before? We had Zoom. We've been able to do this, but we just didn't think about it." So we're trying to do more and more high-impact events like that because it's actually very easy to do.
So it's a combination of big-impact events with Zoom as well as more smaller, one-to-one and making sure that I've got a regular series of one-to-one catch-ups with my clients, with my team members. And those are very focused on making sure everybody's feeling good and knows what the vision is moving forward, and also have a sense of kind of how they're feeling and how they're doing
Charles: (09:22)
One of the reference points, I think, that the creative industries has always been measured by is, in terms of people's commitment to each other, whether it's agencies to clients or suppliers to brands, is somebody's willingness to get on a plane and show up in person. There's always been this sort of badge of honor and this sort of unwritten code that said, "If you're really committed, you will come and do this meeting in person." And to the point you've just made, we've proven to each other that that doesn't have to be true.
I was talking to somebody probably six or seven weeks ago now, offline, who said that right before New York and London shut down, they had done exactly that. They'd spend two days coming into New York and back for a two-hour meeting just to convince their client that they were really serious about them. Since all of that has changed now and because so many people are also reluctant to get on planes anytime soon, as you look going forward, what do you think the criteria will be to say, "This justifies actually getting on a plane and going to a meeting versus let's do this virtually." Where do you think the line will get drawn as we go forward?
Adam Tucker: (10:27)
I think it's a fascinating question that we're going to have to wrestle with because I think we've proven to ourselves and to our clients that not only can we keep business continuity going through video and through Zoom, we can accelerate business. And I would say we've had the ability to collaborate better, to bring in more types of solutions and reach across the far corners of the business than we ever have before through Zoom and through video. And I see us getting more deeply involved in things that we weren't necessarily getting involved in and employee communications and experience and corporate comms and commerce strategy and brand innovation and architecture. All of this just in a span of a few weeks, which we weren't getting involved in before.
So I think it's going to be pretty hard to think about, "What is the right standard that means you have to get on a plane and go to a meeting?" And I think it will probably be around high-impact events, high-impact meetings. I've done two pitches of via Zoom virtually, and they've worked out quite well. So I don't know that we're going to have to have every pitch be in person, but I think the bar will be much, much higher. And I think that that sense of having to turn up to a meeting just to prove yourself and to prove your commitment is no longer there. I think it's just about being human and demonstrating you care about the business and are passionate about the business.
Charles: (12:08)
I agree with you totally. I think it's going to be a completely different world going forward, but picking up one of your points, how are you now casting projects and opportunities? Because to your point, you've suddenly got a much bigger portfolio of possibility, right? There's a much broader swath of potential talent that you can bring in to a circumstantial situation because geography is essentially irrelevant anymore. Time zones are not really relevant anymore. How are you going about casting the right people for the right opportunity? What are you looking at?
Adam Tucker: (12:36)
Yeah, it's a great question, and it's kind of interesting. I, through my leadership role at Ogilvy, have been a big fan and have helped design what we call a hot house system when we have a big client brief that we need to get a multidisciplined team around the table and go off and solve, be it a brand strategy challenge or an innovation challenge. And that process is one where, what I've typically done, is take people off site for a week, get them out of the office, get them focused. And it's a multidisciplined team from digital specialists to technology specialists to creatives to designers, producers, so that we're developing ideas and prototypes that literally come to life in a week. And being out of the office enables you to focus. And in many ways, I've felt like this time of lockdown and working from home has almost been one giant virtual hot house. So we're literally having the ability to surround clients' business challenges with multidisciplined teams and get together and solve a business problem and do it quickly.
I'll give you an example. We had a brief come in. I got a text from a client. I think it was the third Sunday after the lockdown started. And he said, "Check your email. We have an important brief that we need some help with." And the brief was... Basically, they said, look, our frontline employees are coming to work each and every day in the factories under tremendously difficult circumstances across the globe. They're facing the health situation, they're having to work double shifts, all just to keep the supply chain going, and we need work digitally. We need work on the front lines to celebrate and champion them and prove to them that we're committed to them.
And so by Sunday night, I had a team together. They wanted, literally, the work to the market in 48 hours. On Monday, we were briefed. By Monday night, we had three ideas on the table for the client. And literally, through the day, the team and myself, a multidisciplined team, worked through a hot house session and got the ideas on the table, got them to the client. They approved them Tuesday morning, and they were shipped to the front lines by Wednesday, and I don't know that we could have done that under previous circumstances. And, again, it's just the ability for everyone to be incredibly focused on the client's business and have a multidisciplined approach and pull all those resources and folks together who want to work on it and work together on it, solve a problem.
Charles: (15:36)
From a talent standpoint, what are the attributes that you're seeing really stand out? How are people demonstrating their ability to contribute in ways that they couldn't have before or were harder to before?
Adam Tucker: (15:51)
It's a great question. And I think the folks who are really thriving in this environment are the ones who are, first and foremost, the most human and the ones who are starting every conversation with, "Are you okay? And are you really okay? And how can we help?" And they're not just checking in on the client for a status. They're calling to actually really check in and see how the client is doing. And they're having incredibly personal and intimate conversations, and they're coming back and reporting on those conversations. But I think the folks that understand that this business ultimately thrives on relationships and it's a human business and that it's about being real and genuine and authentic are the ones who are excelling. Particularly, as I look across my team right now, I feel really good about the team and how they're approaching the client in those terms on a real human, authentic level.
Charles: (17:01)
What are you learning about yourself?
Adam Tucker: (17:07)
I have to say, I've gone through a journey. I think those first two or three weeks, I literally just found myself out of control, in terms of my diary and having control of my day and driving the business forward. It was constant back-to-back Zoom. And I kind of had the mindset of, "This is going to be a couple of weeks and we'll get through it and everything will go back to normal." And shortly after that, I had the realization that this is going to be long-term and we're going to have to adjust. And I've got to get control of my diary and get some focus back and structure my days around where I'm going to make the most impact and really be thoughtful about that.
I have an amazingly wonderful assistant, but I said to Sally, "Look, I'm here on my own. I've got to manage my time. I've got to really think through my diary myself and pick and choose the things where I'm going to make the most impact with my clients and my team." So I've had to be much, much more purposeful with how I'm spending my time. I've also had to be much more purposeful in just knowing where I draw energy from and making sure that I do that on a daily basis because this is not easy, and it can feel a little bit like Groundhog Day.
So I make sure that every day I'm getting out and I'm getting a run in in the morning, I used to... I had a beautiful commute to work running through Central Park with a backpack on every single morning, and I do miss that. So I get out now with my wife and we do a morning run, and that kind of helps collect thoughts for the day, and make sure a couple of times through the day I get out and walk the dog and just get some fresh air. But I have to really be purposeful with those things or otherwise I'll just find myself caught on Zoom all day and not being terribly productive.
Charles: (19:25)
What are you afraid of?
Adam Tucker: (19:31)
I don't think I would use the word afraid of anything. I think, for me, this is all about trying to make sure that I learn from this experience and my team's learned from this experience, and that we apply that learning both in the short-term and the long-term. And so I guess the challenge of that is being in the middle of it, when it's incredibly intense. And the demands are intense right now, for our clients and for our brands. We're thinking about the short-term, the, "How do we change communications in the middle of this to create immediate impact," but then, "How do we think about the longer term brand implications and what does that mean?" So the level of complexity and questions that we're dealing with are pretty intense and pretty meaty.
So I think the thing that I'm not afraid of, but the thing I'm just keeping a very close eye on is making sure that I'm managing for the client's business in the moment and the team in the moment, but also making sure we're processing enough learning to be able to take this forward and learn from it and figure out how we're going to add meaning in the future. So kind of balancing the short and long-term, I think.
Charles: (21:01)
Yeah. Which is an ongoing challenge in a situation like this, isn't it? Because we don't know when we're going to get to a place that is repeatable, I guess, is the way... People talk about, "How do you get back to?" I think we all agree we're not getting back to anything. I think what we're looking for is how do we get to an environment that we know we can do tomorrow what we did today, and we can do the next day what we did tomorrow, and so on. We want something that we can count on and we don't have that any time soon.
Adam Tucker: (21:28)
Yeah. And a number of clients are naturally asking the question, "Help us think through what the new normal is going to be." And I think we're putting good points of view together at WPP, and there's been a lot of great thinking at both Ogilvy and WPP. But the reality is, as we're in the middle of this thing and living through it almost day to day, it's pretty hard to determine what the new normal is going to be because we don't know how long this is going to go. And we don't know what the long-term impacts are on business, on brand, on consumers. And for me, I think about my own life and my family life, and we're having some serious conversations about how we live our life and what's... Do we live in the city? Maybe we don't live in the city. Do we need all the things we thought we needed? Well, actually we don't need all the things.
So I'm sure consumers around the world are thinking about those questions in their lives, and so there's going to be so much change. It's very difficult in the moment to say, "This is equivocally what the new normal is going to be." We've all got to lock arms together and go, "Here's some things that we're observing and learning as we go, but we don't have the answers, the Holy Grail, today."
Charles: (22:50)
It is an extraordinary period of existential exploration and evaluation, isn't it? None of us have ever encountered a period where people are so reflective about what matters to them and how do they want to live that life, exactly as you've just described.
Adam Tucker: (23:05)
Yeah, yeah. No, there are... I mean, we've gotten into a routine where we make our dinners every single night and we've allowed ourselves Friday night is our take-out night. And in the city, when we live in the city, we constantly do take-out and delivery and spend crazy amounts of money on it. And actually, we kind of thought to ourselves, making dinner with the family every night is fantastic. We love it. It's a small change, but it's actually made a real difference in terms of the quality of our family dynamics and has certainly kind of made us realize we don't need to order delivery every single night. We can make time for this. So there's small changes and there's big changes, but I think you're right. It's certainly a time for significant reflection on our lives and what's important. And what can change for the better moving forward.
Charles: (24:04)
Yeah, absolutely. Adam, thank you so much. Thanks for taking the time. I know you're really busy and I appreciate you coming on.
Adam Tucker: (24:10)
Of course, absolutely.
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