Leading In The Time Of Virus
"FEARLESS CREATIVE LEADERSHIP" PODCAST - TRANSCRIPT
Episode 122: Jonathan Mildenhall
This episode is our sixth of Season 2, which we’ve sub-titled, “Leading In The Time Of Virus”.
These are shorter, focused conversations in which 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 is a conversation with Jonathan Mildenhall, the founder of TwentyFirstCenturyBrand and the former CMO of AirBNB.
Jonathan talked about the enormous difficulties of navigating a young business through these extraordinary times, about how brands need to come together to be relevant in the new society, and about why leaders need to take care of themselves as well as everyone else.
Here’s Jonathan Mildenhall.
Charles: (00:59)
Jonathan, welcome back to Fearless. Thank you so much for coming back on the show.
Jonathan Mildenhall: (01:03)
Thank you very much for having me at this important and challenging time for us all.
Charles: (01:08)
Tell us a little bit about your situation.
Jonathan Mildenhall: (01:11)
So my consultancy TwentyFirstCenturyBrand was launched 18 months ago, and we have two offices, one in San Francisco, the other in New York. And at the beginning of the year, we had a team of 30 people and we're doing really, really interesting work for both 21st century companies that were birthed in this millennia that are looking to really build marketing capabilities, but also 20th century companies who are looking for radical 21st century marketing transformation. So the likes of Unilever, Mars.
Charles: (01:46)
So things must have changed dramatically for you in the last couple of months. Tell us a little bit about what you've learned about your own leadership in the last four or five weeks.
Jonathan Mildenhall: (01:56)
Charles, it's being the toughest period of my career. And part of the reason for that is the level of uncertainty and collective anxiety in the world is obviously unprecedented. But the way that that's impacted my cofounder, Neil Barrie and I, is that over the course of the last 18 months, we built a team of people who are high performing individuals.
But to be honest, when you're a human-centered entrepreneur, as both Neil and I are, those high-performing individuals actually become a surrogate family. And when you have a family, then the last thing that you ever want to do is have to kind of downsize that family. Now, if people come and work for TwentyFirstCenturyBrand and then they get a great opportunity elsewhere and they leave, that's fantastic; you feel incredibly proud. But Neil and I had to take some really tough decisions and reduce our headcount by 30% last week, because of the level of uncertainty and the financial implications that that has. And there can't be a founder or a chief exec of any creative company right now that's not going through those same challenges.
Charles: (03:14)
Yeah. What's the emotional impact on you from a leadership standpoint?
Jonathan Mildenhall: (03:19)
There is a huge level of anxiety about the long term health of the business. And then there's a huge, almost overwhelming sense of guilt and responsibility that the people whose livelihoods depend on the financial success of TwentyFirstCenturyBrand may be negatively impacted, because of the financial uncertainty. So like any business leader, I can't see that far into the future and that creates huge anxiety. But also, like any person who is responsible for the livelihoods of other people, you feel an overwhelming sense of guilt that you can't be confidently meet those expectations indefinitely.
Charles: (04:22)
And obviously one of the challenges is you're dealing with very, very reactive short term dynamics, right? The world is changing, it seems hour by hour if not day by day. How are you trying to balance that with getting out ahead of where this thing is going? Obviously, it's very hard to predict, impossible to predict exactly what's going to happen. But how are you trying to address your own sort of planning process in terms of looking ahead three months, six months, nine months, what are you doing in terms of creating that framework for yourselves?
Jonathan Mildenhall: (04:51)
It's interesting because the one thing that seems to have been amplified over the course of the last kind of six weeks is actually the creative energy of my team and I. And so as we're looking into a future of uncertainty, we are starting to generate more and more products and services that might meet the shifting needs of our clients. And that's one thing that I would encourage our listeners to do. Yes, of course we need to kind of hunker down and protect and maintain as much sense of community with our teams, via online platforms like Zoom. But also, we need to spend most of the day thinking about creative innovation, about strategic innovation and how we might be able to get ahead of solving some of the problems that our clients are facing.
Charles: (05:51)
Yeah, I think that's so true. You said, obviously, and this resonates for me, that when you're dealing with a small intimate company as such as the one you built and you have to let people go, you have this personal sense of guilt and huge responsibility. How are you holding the rest of the people together? How are you helping them to recognize there is still a future here, that you still can trust in what we're trying to build here?
Jonathan Mildenhall: (06:15)
Well, I have three mantras that I focus on each and every day. And the first, I wake up and think personal practice. What's my personal practice going to be to get me through today? Secondly, it's team practice. What are the practices that I can lead with my team to get them through the day? And then thirdly, it's client practice. What are we doing to have our clients understand that we are anticipating some of their dynamic needs?
So from personal perspective, and I would encourage everybody to do this, now that everybody's hunkered down and working from home, we miss getting up, getting out, commuting, getting into the office, so our morning rituals have completely changed. And even if you didn't work out in the morning, that set of rituals actually helped you transform from you, the individual to you, the executive in the workplace. And now everybody's working from home, we need to think of other rituals that will help transform and get people into a high-performing mindset.
And so for me, doing meditation first thing, then doing a little bit of yoga and then actually getting a cold shower, literally as cold as I can stomach it. And standing under the shower helps me, my entire body, my entire mental awareness feel that I am now in a work state of mind. And I'd encourage everybody to think about what are you doing to transform yourself into a work state of mind.
The second mantra is team practice. And for me, we have daily connections. So we have a daily stand up, 9:00 to 9:30, where everybody just checks in on Zoom. And as the leader of the company, I make sure that people are checking in personally. So what's on your mind? How was the weekend? What are you concerned about? But then also professionally, what's on the to do list today? And then we share responsibilities for those that are feeling slightly overwhelmed and other people will elect to take over some of those responsibilities.
Leaders have to over-communicate. Every single day there has to be communication about the state of the business and what's going on. I'd like people to think about conscious bonding and making sure that yes, people are turning up on Zoom, but how can we make that much more of a bonding exercise? And then of course, we've got to practice inclusion, make sure that everybody's speaking, everybody feels seen and everybody feels recognized.
And then the third practice is about clients and being proactive, sending out client communication, being helpful, altering work flows and deliverables so that the clients feel not overwhelmed by another set of meetings, but they actually feel supported by a bunch of smart people that are there to help them meet their dynamic needs as well.
So personal practice, team practice and client practice are what I'd offer the listeners.
Charles: (09:30)
You've always been very human and authentic in how you approach building a business, building a team, how you show up in the world. Are you conscious that you are getting to know people in a different way? I mean it sounds like it’s taking even more time than usual to get to know people in a different way. But are you feeling like that's a foundation now and even in a different level than it was before?
Jonathan Mildenhall: (09:53)
Yeah, it's a really good question, because I was surprised, I am a very in-person human being. I would much rather take a meeting than a Zoom call. I'd much rather go to lunch than have a telephone call. And so I was intimidated and overwhelmed by the amount of time that I'd have to sit at the screen trying to maintain my relationships and the intimacy of my relationships.
And I've been surprised that actually the one on one meetings when it's via video conference, I've seen a different level of intimacy and I've been very encouraged by how I might be able to strengthen relationships, even though I haven't actually been in the same room. We're going into the fourth week now of a shelter in place in San Francisco. I haven't been in the same room of many of my team members for almost a month, but the one on one practice and the team daily rituals have helped me build levels of relationships that have been more intimate than in the past.
Charles: (11:05)
And are you finding people need that more, that people taking more time at the beginning of calls to really do personal check-ins that are genuine and sincere rather than a sort of check the box, "Hey, how are you doing today?"
Jonathan Mildenhall: (11:14)
Yes, but that is the role of the leader. The leader has to facilitate conversations that are authentic and probably much more vulnerable than we've had in the past. And so everybody, you can basically understand the role of a leader by the dynamic of a Zoom call. If the participants are engaged, and vocal and everybody believes that they're both seen and heard, then you can have conversations that are genuinely authentic, and feel almost like a healing process. Because everybody in the world, this is the first time ever in human experience, that we've got this universal anxiety, that we're universally grieving about the freedom that we once had, and the lack of freedom that we have today. We're universally grieving about the fact that our financial futures, and our employment futures and our social futures so uncertain.
So we've got to understand that the team's emotional mindset is challenged. And leaders need to make sure that every single meeting can feel almost like a healing process, as well as get some real serious work done.
Charles: (12:38)
Yeah, I think that's so true. One of the things that I've seen consistently across all the conversations I've been having over the last three weeks, is actually an echo of the point you just made, which is how much more creative thinking and innovative thinking is coming out of companies these days. Somebody said to me, "It's like the handbrake has been taken off." You've said you've seen that. What do you attribute that to? Why do you think that is shown up and so quickly, in fact, in the time of coronavirus?
Jonathan Mildenhall: (13:09)
There is no playbook to deal with coronavirus. And when you have no playbook, you are forced to invent and you're forced to create. And everybody is looking at each other and going, "Well, what shall we do?" And the true response is, "I don't know because we've never been here before. So let's innovate and create together."
And I love the reference about taking the handbrake off. I do genuinely believe that the handbrake and the kind of corporate constraints that usually stand in the face of creativity have been taken off. And one thing I know for sure, that in two years time, we're going to be looking at billion dollar companies that were birthed in the face of the pandemic, either online learning companies, online social companies, or just other things that people ... It's not that we've got the time to think about, but we've actually got the urgency, we're all faced with such urgency. And creativity is often birthed during times of incredible trauma. And we're facing universal trauma right now and that's just going to liberate universal creativity.
Charles: (14:28)
Yeah, I think that's really well put. And I think you're right about that. One of the other themes that I've heard consistently is that there seems to be a greater level of mutual respect among different organizations. So whether it's agencies and clients or consultants and clients, or whether that's brands and supply chain vendors, that there's a much greater degree of respect and sort of almost parity in the relationship. Have you felt that as well?
Jonathan Mildenhall: (14:53)
Yeah. If you don't mind me mentioning a media brand, but Adweek hosted a workshop yesterday with Antonio Lucio, CMO of Facebook, and it was just to get kind of Antonio's perspective on kind of what's going on. And it was so good, because there were CMOs from ... The Head of Marketing at Uber and the Head of Marketing at Lyft were on the call, on the Zoom, and everybody was sharing the collective challenges that they're faced with.
And what I definitely saw and I really feel hopeful about this, is we're going to see brands coming together in a way that is like Coca Cola and Pepsi of old coming together to do amazing things, because the world needs them to come together rather than kind of like fighting against each other. And I feel that this pandemic has removed some of the competitive walls of disciplines and some of the competitive walls in category, and some of the brand competition that we've seen. Because we realize that now more than ever, if we're united in the face of this pandemic, then we might succeed.
Charles: (16:18)
That's a perfect pivot. Thank you for that. What else do you think are the good things that are going to come out of this?
Jonathan Mildenhall: (16:25)
I think that brands particularly having to move from stated intention to proven action and we've talked about experiential marketing being at the cutting edge of twenty first century marketing, but actually brands really understanding how their actions can really soothe the needs of their communities, and how actions speak so much louder than words, and how empty, glossy, multimillion dollar production shoots are just so inappropriate for right now and probably for the rest of the year and probably through most of 2021.
And so I think that one of the good things is that brands will be much, much more intentional of how they actually show up in communities and build brand equity as a result of doing so, but be seen to be much, much more present than in the past.
Charles: (17:31)
And don't you think consumers will have an even greater sort of sense of smell around what's real and what's artificial from that standpoint? I mean I think we're all going to be heightened as to whether you're trying to take advantage of the pandemic to sell me something, or whether you are genuinely interested in my wellbeing as a consumer. Don't you think we're going to have an even higher filter on that going forward?
Jonathan Mildenhall: (17:51)
Yeah, I do. And it's not going to just rest at the brand, but also leaders of these companies. The role that chief execs play publicly to acknowledge the pain that their communities are experiencing right, now and the commitments that the chief exec is preparing to sign up for publicly, have never been under greater scrutiny. And the role that, say, somebody like Tim Cook plays the Apple, where you know there isn't a three or four day period goes by where he doesn't actually issue yet another body of evidence of how Apple is acting in places far beyond its business plan, but to help address this global issue. And people are going to expect more of words and actions from chief execs as well as the brands that they represent.
Charles: (18:50)
I'm sure you're right about that. And I also think from an income inequality standpoint, you're looking at brands like Apple with multiple billions and billions of dollars. Walmart and Target just announced record months in March. I mean we're going to look at companies like that and say, "Fine, you're fine economically, large parts of the world are not. What are you doing to show up and make the world better for people?" Right? And to your point, in ways that are beyond just your business model.
Jonathan Mildenhall: (19:12)
That's exactly right. And so I thought it was quite shrewd, but he needed to do it. But when President Trump enlisted the thought leadership of the big retailers three or four weeks ago, to help them understand how they might be able to make testing available to every American. They knew that they couldn't do it without the big retailers getting over that retail space and their parking lots in order to help people get tested. And so the relationship between government and big business, because both in isolation fall short of each other, but actually together we might be able to get ahead of it, is critical.
Charles: (19:53)
Yeah, I think that's fair. The challenge of course is actually making it happen. Because I read on Saturday that there's only about 10 examples of that actually in place in the country at the moment. So, I think you're right, conceptually that's the right approach, but they actually have to be able to execute against it.
In terms of how business is done, specifically, what do you think is going to be different coming out of this? I mean work from home, where do you think that starts to play a role in how companies are built going forward?
Jonathan Mildenhall: (20:17)
Well, it's interesting Charles, because I was spending a lot of money, $35,000 a month on my office in San Francisco. That's a huge amount of money for a small startup. But I love my office. It was in a WeWork space and it made my company feel so much more established than in actuality, our 18 month history was. But I now look at that expense and I now look at how productive we can be remotely. I think the actual role of the physical office has to be under question.
Now, I praise Tim Cook for everything that he does, but my goodness, there's nobody in Apple HQ right now. One of the world's most celebrated and expensive headquarters and nobody's working there right now. So you have to think of the physical infrastructure of work and really start to get creative about what's right for the team; sense of community, sense of belonging. But also what's right for the shareholders. Am I investing my dollars in the right way? And the physical workspace, I think will be under radical transformation over the next decade, as people realize that you can be so much more productive and effective if you work from home a large majority of the time.
Charles: (21:53)
I'm sure that's true. I'm sure you're right about that. The other thought that strikes me is, it's going to make a substantive difference I think, in all of those women who want to get back into the workplace but not do so on a full time basis, right? Because this starts to create different re-entry paths for them into the work environment, where they can spend more time at home, they can have greater balance. So I'm actually enthused about the possibilities or how it's going to change the shape of the workforce going forward.
Jonathan Mildenhall: (22:19)
Yeah, that's true. That's very, very true. It democratizes your ability to participate in the workforce.
Charles: (22:27)
Yeah. Really well put. Last question for you. What have you learned about yourself in the last three, four weeks?
Jonathan Mildenhall: (22:36)
I'm so much more conscious of the ebbs and flows of my own kind of emotional wellbeing. It's very, very easy to get locked only 12 inches away from my computer screen for four or five hours at a time, get diminished in terms of my own energy. And then because I am very, very effective in my morning rituals and my morning practices as we discussed, but lesser in my evenings. And it's easy, if somebody who's got a lot of positive energy and very, very conscious of my own emotions, but even I can get myself into a funk. And I realize that this positive energy is not an endless supply, and unless I really, really take care of it and be very, very selfish, I've got two young kids, 10 months old, but I'm still really, really selfish with my time in the morning. So that I can get that meditation and I can get that yoga, I can take my cold shower, then I'm a dad. And if I don't do that, then I get depleted so much quicker under this work environment than ever was the case before.
Charles: (23:56)
Yeah, that's such a great piece of self-awareness. We do have to take care of ourselves alongside taking care of everyone else around us, don't we? It's an easy message to overlook, I think.
Jonathan Mildenhall: (24:05)
People say self care, people talk about self care, but you have to really be intentional and put it into practice. Put it as the top three things. I put my meditation, yoga, cold shower on the top of my to do list. And it gives me great joy that when I finally sit in front of my computer, I've literally ticked off three things that I need to do today. So self care is a practice and you need to ritualize the practice, and then you'll have chance of surviving this thing.
Charles: (24:36)
Yeah, I think that's right; it's absolutely true. Thank you so much for taking the time today and for sharing so openly. You are a gent as always.
Jonathan Mildenhall: (24:44)
It's a pleasure. I really appreciate being part of your community, Charles. And I look forward to the day that I can kind of give you a hug.
Charles: (24:50)
Yeah, likewise. Sooner rather than later, I hope. Alright, you take care of yourself and your family.
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