Gail Gallie of Project Everyone
Aligning her leadership with her life.
"FEARLESS CREATIVE LEADERSHIP" PODCAST - TRANSCRIPT
Episode 174: Gail Gallie
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. To help them succeed where leadership lives - at the intersection of strategy and humanity.
This week’s guest is Gail Gallie. She’s the Co-Founder of Project Everyone where she works alongside the writer and director, Richard Curtis.
Project Everyone is a not-for-profit communications agency that creates campaigns and supports partners to raise awareness, inspire action and drive accountability for the Global Goals of the United Nations.
Their mission is to accelerate progress towards a fairer world by 2030, where extreme poverty has been eradicated, climate change is properly addressed, and injustice and inequality are unacceptable.
“It's a really infectious atmosphere, Project Everyone, to everybody. You get caught up and it's exciting and you're saving the world. There's more. And now it's climate and there's gender. And God, look who's just got involved and it's completely self-generating. It's like the world's best sort of renewable energy.”
Gail’s own energy is infectious. Even across a Zoom from three thousand miles away, she lifted my sense of possibility.
As you’ll hear, there have been phases in her career where that hasn’t been the case. And, like many leaders, she’s had times where she’s found herself out of sync with the organization she was running.
But through her journey, she has created a life in which her leadership both reflects and empowers her as a human being.
In my experience, that is all too rare. Most leaders relentlessly prioritize solving their company’s problems over their own personal development.
Leadership is a moving target. And if you’ve listened to this podcast before, you’ll know that great leadership requires that more than one thing be true at once.
You have to care about others. And you have to care about yourself.
And sometimes, not in that order.
Here’s Gail Gallie.
Charles: (02:14)
Gail, welcome to Fearless. Thanks so much for coming on this show.
Gail Gallie: (02:17)
You're absolutely welcome. It's lovely to be here.
Charles: (02:20)
When did creativity first show up in your life? When were you first conscious of creativity as a thing?
Gail Gallie: (02:26)
I think it was, I mean, very early on. I was a really creatively oriented child. I was a really deeply bored child. I had an incredibly mundane upbringing in terms of where I lived. Loving, deeply loving parents but not particularly exciting as an upbringing.
But I did find huge escape, partly guided through both parents. Mom into musicals, dad into jazz, and then myself into anything creative I could get my hands on. So I think I just came out looking for all that stuff. And then I've always leant into it from thereon in, acting at university, or acting at school, actually. Acting at university and then pursuing music and arts things throughout my whole life.
Charles: (03:09)
How did you discover that you loved acting?
Gail Gallie: (03:11)
Well, there is a story there. So my background is working class Geordie and rather unexpectedly found myself at Oxford University at age 17, so a bit young. And definitely not part of the Oxford mafia who, to me, all looked like they all had a gap year, they all knew each other, they'd all been to the same schools or had older brothers and sisters at Oxford.
Basically, they knew what they were doing and I did not. And I also had a thick Geordie accent which, showed up in my first tutorial session where the tutor asked me to read my essay out loud and with nerves and speed, the Geordie accent did not translate that well and the tutor said, "My dear, I think I must stop you there because I don't understand what you're saying and I don't think I'm the only one."
And I just remember thinking, "Shit, I've got to go and change my voice." So that was the beginning of a career, a lifelong practice of acting but specifically at Oxford, I think it took me to a place where I felt safe and confident being someone else. And so I found outlets for that and ended up acting a ton of plays throughout the first two years that I was at uni.
And I'm strangely nerve-free when it comes to performing. So, that bit of acting has… or any kind of performance, you know, speaking in public, acting, singing. Any of it, I don't have nerves. And so I think for me, that was the most releasing, relaxing thing. It was the only place I didn't feel nervous.
That's not true now by the way but then, it was definitely the only place that I felt completely relaxed, which is weird. It doesn't make sense.
Charles: (04:47)
Do you know why that was? Because obviously, so many people don't have the benefit of that and it gets in their way. Why do you think you didn't have nerves when performing?
Gail Gallie: (04:55)
Well, I don't know. I mean it's slightly in my genes. My mum's mum was a maid by day but she was a showgirl by night. And my own mum and dad met because they were ballroom dancers. And so there's obviously some genetic predisposition for some form of showing off without worrying about it.
And then as I say, drifted into it at school quite happily. I don't know. I really don't worry about things. And I think nerves, stage nerves, public speaking nerves, you're worrying about what people are thinking, aren't you? You're worrying about getting it wrong. I don't tend to worry. I tend to analyze in hindsight.
And then I think back, "Oh, God, that could've been better," or "I wish I'd done it differently." But in the moment, I don't worry. I don't have anxiety. It's just not a part of my makeup, and so I think that the pleasure I found in escaping for so many years through acting, combined with the fact that I don't worry in the moment, just makes me a natural kind of public performer.
It doesn't mean, as I say, I don't come home and go, "God. What did I do?" But in the moment, I'm adrenalized. You know, it makes me excited.
Charles: (06:03)
Were you a risk-taker growing up?
Gail Gallie: (06:05)
No, I wasn't a risk-taker at all until I started work. I think it's because I was elevated up the school chain early, I think just by dint of having pretty committed mum and dad. Dad, I remember, teaching me to read very young and my mum was quite hot on maths.
So by the time I got to school in this kind of pretty working class infant school, I was pretty bright and quite competitive. So I would work hard to get to the top of the class. And so in the end I skipped a year and I went straight to secondary. So I missed out the final year of what you'd call kind of primary school now.
And so I was quite busy and quite studious but also quite disconnected from my college, because they were all a year and a half older than me. So all the stuff you do as a teenager, apparently, I didn't. You know, get drunk, kiss boys early, you know, take drugs. I didn't do any of that. I was quite happy doing my dancing and my music, and my swimming.
Because I was always too young for everyone. So that didn't happen. But something happened when I left university and I think maybe for the first time I felt like I'd found a natural environment for me. You know, I wasn't pretending to be someone else at Oxford, I was the same age as most people in work.
The worry-free gene came to the front and now I'm a terrible risk-taker. I mean, my husband, thank God, is not because we've tried to do financial planning sessions together with experts, where they say, "Well, what's your risk profile?"
They literally can't work with us because mine is so high and his is almost flat line. Which is great because it keeps us and our children out of jail and speeding. But mine is insane, it's really to a fault. So I've got to develop some risk aversion.
Charles: (07:46)
What was it that you chose to go into after university?
Gail Gallie: (07:48)
Well, I didn't have that much choice, actually. I think, I feel like I was heavily influenced by being in debt because my parents didn't have a ton of money and I had chosen to do a year off because I did languages, so part of the course you have to study abroad.
And rather than become a kind of au pair or, you know, something that paid money, I went to do more studying. So I think that I was only still 19, I was just realizing why you went to university when I was in my third year. You know, that universities were actually pretty cool and you could wander round and meet cool people and read stuff at your own pace.
So I went to two universities: Siena and Florence. And to burn through the cash because living in Italy for the first time was, you know, amazing. So the most exciting thing that ever happened to me. And so by the time I got back to Oxford and completed my final year, I was really broke.
So I was looking at industries that would have me as a paid, you know, the milk round? I don't know if that happens in America but certain industries recruit from, especially Oxford and Cambridge. And the three ones that were still recruiting in my day were finance, which I was not, and law, which I was not, or advertising.
And I had fancied, if I'd thought of anything, I thought I quite enjoyed television, journalism, quite fancied being a news reader. But that wouldn't pay. You would need to get an unpaid internship and that was not an option. But the advertising industry was recruiting and I ended up getting two jobs.
And I think it again played up to that desire and ability to transform and shape-shift depending on what you were selling. I found that very easy and interesting, looking back how much purpose I've ended up working with. That was not on my radar at all. I just wanted to get a job, get some money and that looked as close to telly as I could find.
And it was lawless, it was brilliant. As a 21-year-old hitting London with at the time £13,000 salary seemed huge. Flying around the world, selling anything at any time. I mean, I don't think you ever worked in the industry. I think you might have done, haven't you?
Charles: (09:50)
Yeah.
Gail Gallie: (09:51)
So it was absolutely kind of lawless, as I say. But great training, great learning on the job. You know, there's nobody as weird, I think, as anyone at the top of those pillars of creative directors and agencies or clients, and the various client companies.
You get very adept at managing difficult or colorful personalities. And I was an account person so just eye on the prize of keeping it moving forward and delivered. So I really do look back at those years with fondness, even though I wouldn't go back into that industry now.
Charles: (10:23)
Did you have ambition when you got into the industry or were you just about the experience that it offered?
Gail Gallie: (10:27)
No, all about the experience. I've never had ambition, honest to God. I've never had ambition. I still don't. I just look for enjoyment, growth and now, changing the world. So ambition for the world to get better.
But personally, I really think if if you took the money imperative away, if I didn't have to work to pay mortgage, look after children, et cetera, I think I could be sitting around in a bakery in Cornwall. I think I'd be fine.
I think when you come from such a kind of basic working class background, it does come with a humility where ambition, as a concept, is an odd one, you know? Everyone's all right, aren't they? That's the sort of resting state that you're born into. So as long as everyone's all right then why would you want for anything else? So I've never, I've never been propelled by ambition.
Charles: (11:16)
And you've never felt the need to prove yourself?
Gail Gallie: (11:19)
No. I haven't, which is odd considering I'm a female Geordie, working class upstart. The first time I ever had coaching was when I was at the BBC. So a few years after the advertising experience.
And I was coming up against a particular senior lady in the Beeb and I had some coaching and what we unearthed - news to me - was that I actually had a block with what I'd perceived as posh ladies in authority. And it went right back to that tutor, that tutor of that first year that said she didn't understand what I was saying.
And, I wasn't trying to prove myself, I was just hiding. You know, I was just in flight mode. So I worked on that and I don't think I've ever quite escaped it but at least I can see it coming when I meet another such lady who I perceive to be a higher class status than me in authority, which is increasingly rare because I'm getting old.
But no, I don't feel I have to prove myself. I don't. I kind of have quite a ‘take it or leave it’ attitude. It's the lack of worrying again. You don't really worry what people think about me. Which is not to say I'm arrogant. I'm not either. I just don't think about it.
Charles: (12:25)
Does that get in the way for you ever?
Gail Gallie: (12:29)
I don't think it gets in the way. I mean, I've obviously crafted the bed that I like to lie in. I think one thing that irritates me about myself and they may be connected is I'm not very disciplined.
I mean, I'm incredibly motivated and energetic, and I can energize other people, no problem. So I can do anything. I find it really hard to stop doing something, or to do it a certain ascribed way over a period of time. The older I get, the more kind of classically creative I think I am, i.e. quite scatty, you know, like Jackson Pollock, you know, pink, pink, pink.
And I suspect I might have more impact on the world if I could work on the discipline. So actually, I just turned 50. That is something I'm investigating and trying things out to how to instill a sort of backbone discipline in my practice. At least something I can turn on when I feel it's helpful. We noticed it with both my kids, but particularly my first one.
He's really good at Lego. He was always very good at sequential instructions from A to B to completion. Even a recipe, I can't be bothered after the first kind of few stages. I'm like, "Yes, yes. Yes, I can. We can work that one from here." And I feel limited by that sometimes. So I want to see what I can do to work on it.
Charles: (13:45)
It's such an interesting frame of reference, isn't it? Because so many people, I think, as they get older, are trying to find ways to express themselves. And have lived through the discipline aspect of their lives, and have created some structure and are now trying to almost break loose of that. And you're going almost the other way round.
Gail Gallie: (14:01)
Completely. I am literally the opposite of what you just described. But I think it's serving me well, you know, as a woman of my age, I read so much about women beginning to have feelings of self-doubt and they feel like they're invisible and they've served their purpose, it's menopause is approaching, all those things.
I don't feel any of that. I feel creative and wilder than ever. I'm trying to go the other way, for sure. Trying to get a bit more kind of discipline and structure, so that I can actually get to old age with a plan.
Charles: (14:31)
You've lived such an interesting life and your career has touched so many different points. One of the things that I think is fascinating about it, through the lens of this podcast is, you've worked in such different kinds of organizations.
I mean, your time at the BBC and obviously, your time in the advertising industry, your time at the BBC, you ran Fallon in London for a while, you had your own consultancy, working with Project Everyone and Project17.
They're all so different in terms of: (a) their intention and their purpose, (b) their motivation. Have you seen practices and characteristics that you think are consistent across those organizations that promote creative thinking in other people?
Gail Gallie: (15:06)
That's such an interesting question. I think the top of mind, it takes me to two places: one, a sort of external observation about the different cultures that those things represent. And then one being a personal internal, well, related to me, rather. One a sort of self-centric commonality.
From an external context, I think I'm a huge believer and I've seen it again and again in people. You know, people, values, relationships, over structure process and data.
I'm not saying that a data-driven story is not a better story. But I feel you do need the story, you know? And I'm a huge user of story. I respond to it. I use it to try and move people from A to B. And I think so the humor and the people, the relationship side of things is always what will make a difference, will make something work, will make an organization attractive, either to hire staff into or to be hired.
And that sounds like me rejecting the process that I've just explained. I can't quite get my head around but the relation there to the second point I was going to make, about self-centered observation through the years, is how dependent I am on other people to be my best self. And I think that is partly an emotional thing and wide open.
You know, I would always rather have someone else to work with on something and respond super well to that. but I also think there's not much I can do on my own. You know, and there's actually, there's a particular person. I'm going to name-check her because if she listens to this, it'll make her laugh.
But someone called Katy Bradford is someone that I've worked, known her since she was 14. She knows me critically inside out, and I've had her at my side for several of the startup phases of these ventures. She's just a brilliant, complete opposite to me, backbone, that allows things, allows the best bits that I can bring to thrive. So there probably is a relationship between those two things. I'm a deep believer in the people over the process.
But at the same time, I thoroughly enhance the fact that brilliant people need some sort of structural process behind them. You know, it's just like a platform to stand on because without that it all falls over.
Charles: (17:16)
When you walked into each of those situations, were you conscious of of having a mindset or an approach yourself about how you were going to create the kind of change that you wanted to bring about?
Gail Gallie: (17:26)
They've all been quite different. I mean, I remember going into... As I said, advertising, I was just walking into a job. And you're so running around an agency, carrying someone else's bag. You're just trying to keep up. So I think, that era is, I can't really draw any agency lessons out of, as in personal agency.
I think I wanted to go to the BBC when I left advertising. Then I had a very strong feeling that I wanted to work closer in the media, closer to music, the art that I probably love the most.
But I hadn't got a clue about how to do it and then looking back on that, I was quite vulnerable because I landed not knowing what a marketing director was. You know, I'd done advertising and the person who hired me figured I'd figure it out. But actually, I walked into a wall of politics about who did PR, who did direct marketing, because I didn't, I think, have that sense of how it was going to be. Then I was, for some months, if not the first year, very ineffective until I found my feet.
And then I think I began to understand - almost like the art of judo. So maybe don't rush at it headlong, maybe begin to learn how to sit back and be able to hold things that don't, at the time, look like that's going to work. Or even, you can't see where the answer is and I'm thinking the BBC ended up…. The more things I took on, as I ended up running marketing for quite a lot of different bits, there were many conflicts in that.
You know, there were many difficult program makers or, line managers, the lady I was scared of, as I said, or director generals, or incoming negativity from press or difficult talent. And I began over 10 years in that job, I think, taught me that you might have a view about how you want something to be and you might have a view about what the endpoint is, but the path there may not be immediately obvious.
And rather than freak out or try and run at it, just sit and hold it there. And I only left that job... I love the BBC, still do. And I left it because I felt like I was across everything but I wasn't sure what I was doing anymore.
I could've told you anything that was going on in the BBC but I couldn't tell you at the end of any given week what had happened because I'd made it happen. So I think that created.… What I wanted to bring to the world in terms of creativity and actually making stuff, I'd lost the sense of, hence, becoming a hands-on consultant for a few years, where I definitely had a vision there.
And that's when it began, I think, for me, that positive change in the world. So I was drawn to things like Pudsey Bear, which was a brand review I did because I felt so underplaying the potential of this sad little bear, you know? Even just make him smile, that's going to make things better. You know, I got really executional And that brought me joy again and it re-upped my sense of what I could do.
And I enjoyed the consulting when I had children, because I think it's difficult to…. You can coast then. You're happier just coasting because frankly you just need to do some work, get home, go mad, come back to work, go mad, go home.
It's that funny old first five years of being a working mother. And then the Fallon job, I was sort of pulled in to that, if you can imagine, as if someone being fished from the sea by an old boss/colleague. But I did have a strong sense of what I wanted to bring to that place because of what he told me it needed. They all needed a really energizing shot of optimism and belief in that agency.
I didn't want to go back in the ad industry particularly, but as a leadership brief, it was the first time I'd been offered a specific leadership role that fitted what I thought I could do, which was basically cheer people up and get them to believe in themselves.
So I definitely had a very focused agenda on that. And I think that's probably why it fell apart because that agenda was not the agenda of the holding company, as it turned out. And so I think after a couple of years of me being fantastically optimistic and positive and them actually just wanted me to get loads more revenue and cut people if necessary, there was a clash. And we had to, we had to part. Having learnt a lot. But, we were not aligned.
Charles: (21:19)
Did you feel like you were able to make a difference early on?
Gail Gallie: (21:22)
Yeah. And I got really good feedback about it as well. You know, not universally, there was some good and learning conversations with some of the people who'd been there throughout about what I was doing or how it felt. But by and large, I felt that it was well-received.
You know, for a while, it also worked with the business agenda because that renewed energy and you could feel it in the place and- and we began to win pitches and we began to get nice reviews written about us again.
And then I actually ducked out and had second baby and the world changed because there was this sort of financial crash during that phase. Nokia, particularly, our biggest client, crashed and it was that point where they literally went off a cliff and that had been a tremendously important pillar in the agency’s financial health. And then I was off having a baby.
And so the timing was just awful but when I came back, the morale…. I mean the difficulty I think is being a charisma-led leader without much process behind you, is that when you stop being there, and this was definitely a learning for me, the strength of your leadership is really proven when you're not there.
And that was definitely, I think, came up short because it coincided with this sort of crash in the financial real world, which exposed the difference between what we've been doing and how we've been doing it and actually what the holding company, certainly by then, were very focused on, which was revenue protect, cut staff you know, all that stuff.
So I think it was successful for as long as it was successful. And then I think people probably felt quite abandoned because I suddenly had to switch to firefight in a role I clearly wasn't happy. So my authenticity probably didn't look great. Hang on, aren't you the cheerful, let’s just go, you know, all guns blazing. Who cares about the money, we're going to, you know, restore confidence.
Aren’t you that guy? And now you seem to be the other guy. and it was horrible. I had a really unpleasant year, of not feeling like myself and not knowing what I was doing.
Again, really pivotal intervention from a coach called Fiona Parashar at that point, who helped me understand my inner dialogue and allowed me to then take that out which was, ultimately, leave, and very coincidentally start Project Everyone. That was not by design, that was definitely by accident.
Charles: (23:26)
What was the inner dialog you realized or you revealed?
Gail Gallie: (23:29)
Is it okay to want a career that is predominantly wanting to do good in the world? You know, I had gone into Fallon. The kind of macro ambition and the obvious one was to cheer up our organization, to restore it to its creative glory, make people believe in themselves.
But I realized that what I also was hoping was something I've been carrying with me for a long time, which is a sense that that industry has all the talent to fix all the problems and yet, it's directed at all the wrong ends.
So I think what I was hoping was I could use Fallon as a kind of prototype for how a creative agency could end up being, in effect, what Project Everyone is. You know, a creative unit in the service of a better world. But it did not work with the commercial agenda. But all of that was turning around, I just felt like a terrible failure if I went into a meeting with Publicis because my numbers weren't good enough.
And then I would go into the agency and have to try and explain why we were losing staff, or why we had to stop that being spent. And they'd look at me like sad children, and so I felt I was failing everyone. And it took a wonderful day immersion with this wonderful lady, to let me just be still enough to hear what I was feeling, which is, I just want to be in an organization.
I don't want to go and become a monk. I'm not the right person to be an on-the-ground aid worker, but the skills I have, combined with the desire I have to fix the world, that's valid. You can be a valid person. And it's a pretty brutal place to be, to be a commercial chief executive when you've never done it before.
I went from account director level to CEO. I'd never done any of the in-between in an agency. Never done an MD. You know it was pretty bad really. And then I was a woman in what ended up being quite a male dominated, quite aggressive, I'd say, atmosphere.
So I think I was just lost. I think I was just a little bit, by my standards, which is rare, wasn't quite sure who I was. The dialogue that emerged is who I am and who I think it's why I've been so sort of screamingly happy in my work for the last seven years is that it's all aligned and it's flowing.
Charles: (25:27)
When you had that recognition of who you were and you suddenly realize you had the ability and the opportunity to do something differently, what were the emotions that that filled you with? Did you have any fear about that at all?
Gail Gallie: (25:39)
No, I didn't have fear. I just felt the most extraordinary sense of relief. It was very, very clear and specific. There was a new year. We'd moved out to Bath, so we weren't living in London. So I had to do this awful commute as well up and down to do this job I didn't like anymore.
And there was one New Year's Eve where, as is common, lots of our friends were coming down to Bath and there was going to be a big party in one house and I got a throat infection and I couldn't go. So I said, "Well, I'll babysit the kids." They were all quite young. You know, no worries, I will just stay in and I'm going to bed super early.
But I had seen some of the friends before, and I hadn't seen them for a while. And they said, "Oh, how you doing? Yeah." And I was, like, "Not great, actually. And I'm not enjoying this and I feel stressed by that." They had moved by then to the north of Scotland. So they were in a different zone but ex-advertising. Both of them.
And he said, "You know you don't have to do it?" And it was just a little voice on that New Year's, last day of the year. He said, "You don't have to be a big gun CEO." And that was with me, that stayed with me.
Then I went to sleep and I woke up the next morning, as you do, if you've been to bed at nine o'clock. The antibiotics had kicked in. Woke up at 7:00, the sun rose. I felt suddenly much better of the throat infection. And the first thing I thought of was him saying, “You don't have to do this anymore.” And it was like a sort of, the most beautiful kind of yoga bowl chime of peace.
I said, "Oh, great." And then I literally worked with a great headhunter who performed this wonderful intermediary role where I could say to her, "I basically want to go. I don't think I'm the right person." She was able to say that and the person who'd hired me who did not want to do me wrong, had managed to negotiate a kind of exit package, so we all left friends.
And there's a quote, at the time, I read, somebody who's talking about being in the White House. Where they were talking about their difficulties with their marriage of being in the presidential office. And somebody had said to them, "Presidents are just temporary, marriages are for life."
And I sort of bastardized that phrase with my boss at the time, saying, "Look, you know, we've been friends for a long time, who's doing which job at this point is fleeting but we are friends." And for me to have that conflict taken away as well, because he was a great friend of mine, the guy who hired me.
And who ultimately I left. And so there was just a screaming sense of peace. It was wonderful. So no, I wasn't afraid. And because we had done a nice exit deal, I was able to not worry about money to live on for a few months.
And so it gave me a real clarity of sight. Not that I knew what I wanted to do, but I felt like my vision was great. Like, I could see the whole horizon of opportunities and then just waited a little to percolate and that's when Project Everyone, literally, kind of emerged.
Charles: (28:11)
And when you founded Project Everyone with Richard Curtis, were you conscious about how you were going to lead? Did you decide you were going to lead that differently?
Gail Gallie: (28:20)
And there's a third founder, Kate Garvey, my great friend. So how it had come about was she just left Freuds Communications. I had just left Fallon. We both had had young children. We'd had a great lunch where we reflected on how funny it was that we both worked in and around each other's orbits.
Like, I'd worked around politics, she very much worked in it. I had worked very much in communication, she was sort of on the fringe because she was much more in the policy side of things. And we never worked together. So we had this great lunch, as girlfriends can do, especially when they escape their young children and there's wine involved.
And we ended up leaving the lunch with a very firm commitment to each other that we'd do something great together soon. Didn't know what it was but it was going to be great. And we were going to be our own bosses, because actually, we both always worked for very powerful, successful men up until that point.
And that's the only place we'd gotten to, and bump into powerful successful man, Richard Curtis and start again. But, it was very, very collaborative from the start. Richard is an incredible, I'd almost say non-leader. But as in he definitely leads and imprints his way of doing things, but it's super, super collaborative and creative and open and always open to possibilities and he works on walls of post-it notes.
So anything that comes up that could be a thing that rather than edit it there and then he'll put it up. So I think the early months, there was only a few of us and I intensely learned from him about a creative leadership style that obviously suited me down to the ground.
And I think it came because he is who he is, and his connections and such and the brief was, "I'm calling on behalf of Richard Curtis and the United Nations, would you mind helping us save the world a bit?" That's a pretty strong kind of opener. So it's a very safe space to try out this new style for both of us. Kate was equally kind of, I think, she would say, taken aback. This was a new way of working for both of us.
She’d worked in politics and UN land and PR, quite hardcore and I'd worked in the conditions I just described. So this just, like, stars unicorns and angels, you know, it's just amazing. And the more people that joined the machine, we kind of hired people who liked that and were thriving with that. And I think that's what gave us this slightly sparkly, we still have this sort of slightly sparkly orbit, so that people like working with us.
I mean, we're really annoying. Basically, if you see us coming, you should run because we're going to be asking you for money, airtime, you know, whatever talent you've got, whatever product you can give to the goals.
But I think the energy of generative, open collaboration was really infectious. And as I say, because it suited me so much, I really thrived. You know, I would take one bite of it and it would turn into a three course meal of joy.
And it's infectious. It's a really infectious atmosphere Project Everyone to everybody. You get caught up and it's exciting and you're saving the world. There's more. And now it's climate and there's gender. And God, look who's just got involved and it's completely self-generating.
It's like the world's best sort of renewable energy. There you go. I still find it very exciting seven years on. And we realized that just now, we're almost halfway through the tenure of the goals already because they're a 15-year program.
Charles: (31:22)
So how do you characterize or how do you articulate the characteristics of this leadership style?
Gail Gallie: (31:27)
The word "open" is something that I feel is an obvious one. And democratic which sounds like it might be arduously managed, but it's not. You know, ideas in this place really do come from anywhere. No one cares anybody's status or experience or title; it's all about in the moment.
Creative is just obvious, but you know, natural, bold, fearless, actually. It's a very enabling environment, where people feel, I think, enabled and rewarded for speaking up, then leaning in. We're very forgiving, People can pursue an idea or a project down their avenue and it can pivot in a heartbeat because that bit of the UN went down and changed its mind or that government change, you know? And we're like, "Whoo, never mind."
And that, actually, that's reminded me of being back in the early, early days of advertising where you just have to…. Things change so fast and you have to do that, "Okay. What's the plan now? What's the new one?" And there's a lot of that here. Lots of holding onto your darlings very lightly because at any point, they might fly off and you need to get another idea going.
So I think easygoing but incredibly passionate at the same time. It’s quite rare, because normally in my experience, places where people are driven by their passion for something are quite challenging environments because people hold onto those things until they prized off them.
For some reason, Richard doesn't work like that. I think, filmmakers especially Polymath filmmakers like him who've done the big studio numbers, he's directed and he's written. He's done comic relief. You know, he's done serious stuff, fun stuff, Blackadder, you know, concerts. He holds onto lots of things very lightly but yet, manages to steer a path of intent and purpose through all that.
So I think that would be the style for me, always like shipping, moving creative dynamic but with quite a strong backbone, which we're lucky, you know, the goals give us that. So we've never had any discussion about whether we fall, or what are we trying to achieve, because luckily, UN made a framework for that. So we have a very given kind of mission and therefore, we are very free to have a very dynamic body of work around that.
Charles: (33:38)
Businesses are obviously massively influenced by metrics. You lived that reality. We both know the reality of that. You're working in an organization that clearly has goals. There's goals that are specific. There's 17 of them. But I also read somewhere that you said, you know, it was hard to get real data on a number of those, maybe many of those.
How has that changed your leadership when you are working towards things that are specific, but so massive and so widespread, it must be very hard to see whether you're actually making progress in many cases?
Gail Gallie: (34:07)
Really good, well-timed question that because we've just, this morning, in fact, finished a process and presented it to reorganize the whole team - there's about 30 of us now - about our theory of change and our impact framework. It's a real sign of how we've grown up.
But for exactly that reason, how do you ever know it's working? We've branded a policy framework, that's happened and that's not the easiest thing in the world.
So we know we've done some good things. We know the goals are increasingly adopted as the framework for progress, but how much of that is down to what we've done, and do we care about that or are we happy to keep throwing things out into the ether and accept that some will stick and some might not?
We felt not least to get reporting back to funders and to continue to fund the work, we needed to get tighter on it. And what we've accepted is that as a sort of journey of awareness of the goals, affinity towards them and engagement and then adoption. That's the journey we want to take everyone through in a lazy river kind of way. And we're going to start monitoring of the people we come into contact with, as an audience set, world leaders, business leaders, you know, movement builders, media publications. We'll identify them.
We'll work out where they are on that journey of awareness, affinity, adoption and begin to monitor how far people are traveling. And then we have also limited our, what we think our scope is. So it is not our job to also monitor how much those goals are being achieved. And it's quite liberating to let ourselves off that hook, you know. We are not measuring climate change, we are not measuring the amount of women and girls in school.
But we are working with people who may, themselves, be monitoring that or driving that. What we are trying to do is help them navigate and frame their work within the goals, so we can report back on how many people are framing it in the goals, more than, how much plastic have we taken out of the ocean.
And that's felt like a liberating process. We've done it with all our director-level people and had an external sort of consultant come and guide us through the process, and consult with some of our major partners on what they think our highest impact is and what role in the ecosystem we most uniquely serve.
And it is no surprise given how I've been explaining the theory and the practice here. We bring this creative magnetism to what is otherwise quite a hard work policy framework, which makes people want to get involved. And we need to keep refreshing that energy source, but as I said, it feels very natural here.
So I think we feel quite validated that the role we're playing is unique, people see it as unique, and it does seem to be bringing people on a journey towards this consistent framework which is what we started off trying to do seven years ago.
Charles: (36:50)
This is a pretty esoteric question, but I'm just so struck by the power of your positive energy and the place in the world that you sit and the place in the world that you see the world from.
You said in something I read that the world is a closed system, which struck me immediately as both right and so obvious, I don't know why nobody else has said it before. We are so surrounded by so much that seems negative, whether it's the lasting impact of the pandemic whether it's, certainly in the States, the politicization of all of that stuff….
You know, what's going on in Texas in terms of abortion law and clearly will happen in other states thereafter, famine, poverty, education. So many of the things that the United Nations' goals are focused on. Within the context of all of that, do you think that positive or negative forces have more lasting influence?
Gail Gallie: (37:35)
That's such a huge question. That's like saying are we doomed, or are we going to be okay?
Charles: (37:40)
Yeah, I think there's a bit of that in my question, for sure. I think I'm looking for somebody to give me a bit of hope.
Gail Gallie: (37:44)
Well, I mean, I've been around this journey a bit myself. I'm sure we all have through the pandemic and also through my deepening understanding of the planetary crisis, you know, driven by our use of fossil fuels, and our use of the world's natural resources.
I think that positive energy has a greater lasting effect and I think that with every terrible event, whether that is the election of a dreadful president, the passing of an awful law, or a pandemic, or a global shock through a weather event, it has a dramatically opposite effect in terms of galvanizing the human spirit to its very best to work together. Basically, humans wish to work together and I think they wish to do good. And I think the more the negative global shocks, the more the positive reactions.
At the same time, I am not necessarily optimistic that we've stopped in time, our worst excesses of how we use the planet to save humankind, and my optimism now comes from kind of a meta perspective of, the planet would be okay. I hope we can preserve our place on it but we'll have to deserve it. And I feel like there is a turning point in human consciousness of what we're doing here.
And I hope that translates to greater collaboration, greater innovation. You know, mankind can do anything. So I am very much hoping that we can use our personal energies to direct that to to the right ends just with greater awareness of what we've been doing. You know, we haven't.... I don't think people have known ‘til now. And now we know. So I'm hoping we can fix.
Charles: (39:19)
So well said. Last question for you: what are you afraid of?
Gail Gallie: (39:24)
Personally, I think I'm afraid that I.... Because I don't know where my own positive energy comes from, because I don't have ambition, because I can't quantify how I keep going. I just wake up every morning with this…. And I always have, pretty much.
I mean, I've had a few instances in my life, you know, death of a parent or you know, bit of post childbirth sadness. But by and large, I've had this fantastic, sunny disposition and attitude to life. I'm quite scared what happens if and when that stops?
Because I've got no experience in how to pull myself back from, like many people have to, daily insecurity or depression or, you know, lifelong afflictions. I'm quite scared that the juice runs out. I don't know what to do if that happens, I wouldn't know what to do. So I am honestly a bit scared of that. But honestly, maybe spiders. That kind of thing.
Charles: (40:18)
Thank you so much for joining me today. what a fantastic conversation. And, I'm so in awe of your positive energy and I wish you could find a way to bottle it because I think so many of us could benefit from it on a daily basis.
Gail Gallie: (40:27)
Ah, that is very kind. Well, that's just very kind. I've really enjoyed the conversation. Thanks so much.
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