Leading In The Time Of Virus
"FEARLESS CREATIVE LEADERSHIP" PODCAST - TRANSCRIPT
Episode 230: Vicki Maguire
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.
In today’s world, leadership means meeting the challenges of two viruses - COVID-19 and racism. In this environment, unlocking creative thinking and innovation has never been more critical.
Today’s guest is Vicki Maguire, the Chief Creative Officer of Havas London.
Vicki is clear about who she is and she’s driven to create an environment in which people can be authentic. She’s also clear what it means to be authentic.
We talked about what 2020 has taught her and which of the changes will stick around into 2021 and beyond.
What have you learned from this year? And what do you want to be true 12 months from now?
Good questions on which to start a brand new year.
Here’s Vicki Maguire.
Charles: (01:04)
Vicki, welcome to Fearless. Thanks so much for joining me on the show today.
Vicki Maguire: (01:07)
Pleasure.
Charles: (01:08)
Tell us where you are at the moment. And how are you doing?
Vicki Maguire: (01:12)
I'm in the offices of Havas London, which is in Coal Drop Yard. If you know London, we're at the back of King's Cross Station. It's our first day back after our second lockdown. And now I'm in the office. I'm doing... I'm doing good. Lockdown is not good for me. I've had... I've... I mean, look, people have died. I'm in a better position than a lot of people, but I don't... I'm not good in a room, in my spare room talking to people on Teams, having an hour conversation about something that would take me two minutes if I was sat on your desk. So that's been a little bit... It's been very frustrating for me. So to actually be around people that I don't live with is a massive bonus.
My partner, Macaulay, about three years ago, had a kidney and pancreas transplant, and so he's on the shielding list, yeah? He's got... He's on immune suppressants, so not only have we been shielding... and still shielding, even out of lockdown. It doesn't mean the virus has gone away. It just means that the NHS has got room for you, which isn't a good enough reason to kind of go out and kind of like celebrate in my opinion. So we've been shielding from ourselves, if you like, in a very small two-bed flat in London with no garden. And we've been shielding, trying to shield from other people, and it's been driving me [inaudible]. I want to kill him. I'll kill him before the virus gets him. So it's been really difficult.
Charles: (03:00)
How does he feel about you?
Vicki Maguire: (03:02)
Oh my God, he thinks I'm a [inaudible]. Seriously. He listens to me on all my chats and just walks away, shaking his head like, "I've shacked up with a woman that says things like circle back." And I don't blame him because when you've... It's like I think he thinks I live in a permanent bad sitcom about kind of like wanky industries because he's like what... He was a tailor. He was a tailor on Savile Row, and he just hears me and just goes, "What the fuck is she on about now?" So, yeah. It's good that we've got a bit of distance, physical and emotional distance.
Charles: (03:48)
You started... You started this job January the first, right?
Vicki Maguire: (03:52)
Oh my God. Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. Yeah.
Charles: (03:55)
Big plans, I imagine, walking into a big, very public-facing role.
Vicki Maguire: (04:01)
Huge. I mean, I was literally... I got my speech prepared. I was, this is how I was going to land. These were my plans for the year. Going to hit the ground running. And literally, I think it was about 9 or 10 weeks in, and I was still saying hello to the same people, trying to get people's names right and stuff like that. And then we go whack into the first... And the first lockdown was super severe, obviously, no going out, the parks were closed, you had a crash course on Teams. Nobody really knew what Zoom was. So that was... Man, that was hard. That was hard.
Charles: (04:51)
How did you adapt?
Vicki Maguire: (04:52)
Very quickly. I... Basically... I mean... When I came in, and I totally... I always stand by this, is, my job as a leader, if you like, is to get the best out of people. And I always say, “If you are an introvert, I will find you a corner. If you're an extrovert, I'll find you a stage.” Yeah? My job is to find, to give you the best kind of environment, both physically and emotionally for you to do your brilliant best. Yeah? So I was very, very conscious that this... it was a new crew. I was getting to know them, they were getting to know me, and in a situation that nobody knew how this was going to play out. I'd got a bet with the guys on reception, with security or reception, it was only going to last two weeks.
I got a 10 pound bet, and I kind of lost that really quickly. And so I literally just tried to spend as much time with my department as possible to work out what they needed from me. And some agencies or some people you'll talk to go, "Oh, it was... We got into a routine. We protected our time. We did this and that." And we couldn't do that because we were still working it out. There were some people that were like, "Well, I've got my kid off school, so I can't work between X and X." And it's like, fine. Well, okay. Well, I'll be there for you when you want to work. And they're like, "Well, I'll work really early in the morning." Fine. I'll speak to you at six in the morning.
And then you'd have other people that were like, "I've got my kids I'm looking after. I'm looking after the family. So actually, can I talk to you at eight, nine, 10 o'clock at night?" And it's like, well, of course you can. So I fitted in with people's life as we all started to try to work out kind of like how to play this ridiculous kind of COVID dance. And it worked. It worked. We've pitched and we've won over Teams, over lockdown. We've got work out over lockdown. We've got a nice vibe going. We've got a good crew together, kind of like, under lockdown. And... But yeah. Let's not do it again. Thank you very much.
Charles: (07:26)
It must've been really difficult leading a group of people that you didn't know very well and starting to try to get to know them remotely, through Zoom screen, through a Microsoft Teams screen. How did you go about getting to know them personally? How did you find out what they were capable of?
Vicki Maguire: (07:41)
Do you know the thing about Teams and the thing about Zoom is that you're in people's rooms, you're in places in people's houses that they don't even invite their best mates to. Right? I'm working... When I was back at home, I'm working in a room that we used to call the never, never room because we could never, never get in it. It was just full of shit. So we had to... Everybody had to find their corners, and kind of creatives and kind of like colleagues and clients alike had to find these spaces. And I actually think that actually, very quickly, that brought us closer. And it only took a junior team to go "Vick, there's three pairs of pants behind you on a radiator." That's a massive icebreaker. And with clients as well, they're just kind of like, "Oh, hold on a minute. The dog wants to come in. The kids are screaming."
One of my massive... One of my big clients, I was having a call with them, and they were just trying to kind of like silence their kid off camera. And suddenly this kid came in and just hit them with this plastic cricket bat. It was the funniest thing I've ever seen. And that stuff brings you a lot closer, a lot quicker. So basically, that was it. Also, it's... Nils used to say this, energy beats everything. Yeah? And we'd all... It's like anything, when a new boss comes in or you get a new head and you're looking forward to working with somebody new and you want to find out about them and vice versa.
So the energy was right, it was just over a different medium. And do I wish I could just sit on the corner of their desks and have a proper chat or go for a coffee or go buy them a drink or whatever is? Yeah, I would have loved to have done that, but you make the best of what you've got. And we made the best of what we got. Not in an enforced kind of like, "Hey, let's have uncomfortable drinks at 6:30." Not in that way. I just literally spent a lot of time just talking about any random shit, and we worked each other out. And that was good. That was good. And we've now got this shared experience. We all have, haven't we? How did you do 2020? It's... So I think that it's like dog years. I feel like I've done seven years.
Charles: (10:23)
Were there parts of this that were better? Do you think we'll look back on this and think that in some ways we were grateful for some part of this experience?
Vicki Maguire: (10:33)
I think we'll have to or else it will make people very angry that they've had to go through this. I think relationships are stronger. I think the ways... Some people have absolutely embraced working from home, and they have delivered way beyond my expectations. So when we come back and they want to work that way, [inaudible] fine, absolutely fine. I'm working with talents that... around the world now, and whereas before, begrudgingly, I might've said, “Well, now can you find me somebody that can come in?” That's blown the doors off now. I think more parents can realize that actually, with the right people around them and the right kind of agency vibe, they can come back earlier if they want to or come back into the industry because working from home hasn't got that industry stigma. Everybody says that they'd like to do it, but nobody really wants to do it because they think they're going to miss out.
I think all of that stuff. I think we won't be on planes. I think we won't... I think business travel... I think the bottom's going to drop out of that because we know that we can manage this way, and it's a lot cheaper. And I just hope people are a little bit more caring, to be honest. I'm very conscious that nobody stands on their doorstep at eight o'clock on a Thursday and claps marketing. Yeah? I mean, I think that... I think, generally, I think a lot of brands have kind of questioned their role within this, their purpose within this, their role of how they spend their money, how they talk to people. I think that's... I think this crisis has shown... We've shown a light into every single corner, not just of our working, of our industry and of our lives. And I think hopefully some good will come of that.
Charles: (12:45)
What do you think 2021 is going to look like?
Vicki Maguire: (12:48)
Oh, I'm really... I'm just going to sound really kind of like Pollyanna, but I'm actually really optimistic. I think this... there's some interesting things that were starting to happen pre-COVID. Something ridiculous... Like in our industry, something ridiculous like nine or 10 startups in like nine or 10 months, I find really exciting. Now, they weren't planned during COVID. They were planned pre-COVID. People... You'd take a couple of years to get your kind of shit together or at least a year to get your shit together and do something like that. But there was an energy... back to the energy thing. There was an energy around London, like two years, 18 months ago, that I think people have started to kind of just go, "Well, fuck it. We're going to do it anyway."
I mean, who launches a business in the middle of a global pandemic hurtling into a recession or not knowing what the fuck Brexit will bring? People that haven't got a choice, have got that itch that they really need scratch and are going to do it anyway. And I find that really exciting. Then there's a whole kind of like, the kind of break-up and make-up of WPP. I think that's going to be really interesting to watch. The melding and the kind of like, the bringing together of kind of like skills and coaches. I'm interested to look at that from afar. So yeah, I think it's going to be... I think it's going to be really interesting, but I think people are just ready to draw a line under this year, and we'll front foot next year. So I think it's going to be quite an optimistic, proactive kind of year. So I'm going to make sure I have a very quiet Christmas, so I can hit the ground running, again, with both feet.
Charles: (14:55)
And how are you going to adapt your leadership, or how do you think you're going to need to adapt your leadership to deal with the fact that, to your earlier point, people have got different realities now, different understanding about what is expected of them, what they're capable of, the kind of environments in which they can succeed? How are you going to adapt the way that you show up from a leadership standpoint?
Vicki Maguire: (15:16)
Oh, this is going to make me sound like such a wanker, but I have never... I don't... I have never had hard and fast rules. Yeah? I'm... I think my... If I have got a leadership style, it is fluid, it is meld to the people that I am dealing with. So I don't... I'm not rigid. There isn't one way. There are many ways. I've got a lot of experience in a few different industries, and I bring all of that with me. At the end of the day, this is a people industry, and if we... My big thing is, do right by my people. And I can see skills in them, and I can see kind of like where... stuff we need to work on. And I do that on a very human level.
I don't do that on a, "You've got to be in at nine o'clock. If you're not in on a Sunday, don't come in on a Monday." I don't do any of that shit. I've learned... I've learned from the worst. Yeah? I know that the places that I have flourished, if you like, in my kind of 25 year meteoric rise have been places that have let me be me and have got behind me and kind of like... and have allowed me to be my authentic self rather than me trying to fit in with a style of whoever that particular leader was. The great... places like Wieden will just embrace the crazy and the outsiders. And that's what we tried to foster at, kind of like Grey that I used to call the most highly functioning donkey sanctuary because we purely kind of like attracted those kinds of people. And it's the same, exactly the same, at Havas. There is enough space here, both physically, at the moment, and kind of like... and emotionally to kind of... to bring your authentic self to work and it will work, it will work for you.
Charles: (17:40)
And what... I was talking to somebody yesterday about the idea of authenticity, and it's obviously a word that has a lot of different connotations. What does it mean to you? How do you bring your authentic self? And how do you encourage people to bring their authentic self?
Vicki Maguire: (17:53)
I think... I think the way to do that is to have honest conversations, to kind of like... This is an industry that, at its worst, is kind of like... is built on façade and pretense. And a boys' club hierarchy, system of hierarchy, and kind of... and bullying. And I think once you break that down and you can talk to people, have honest conversations about, about kind of work and creativity and confidence, because confidence and creativity do kind of go hand in hand. Then I think that there is... the scales drop, and that's when you get to that... that's when you... When people think that they can bring their real self to work and don't believe they have to put on an act or put on a show, when you deal with people as people, then only the best can come from that.
And I found that because I haven't fitted in in a lot of places. I'm a tubby girl from Leicester who can't spell, and without wearing my kind of my working class credentials on my sleeve, there were places that I didn't fit in. And that was... that was... I got into advertising kind of like in the kind of mid to late nineties. They were still very much a boys' club. Everybody had offices. I was usually the only girl on the floor. You know what I mean? I do remember having to go, I don't know, two floors down to find a girl that I could borrow a Tampax from. And if you... And also, if you weren't that kind of the middle... If you weren't middle class, you were either a novelty act or you were just totally ignored.
And I remember having this conversation with somebody that runs... she's an MD now of one of the London agencies, and she came from a similar background, at a similar time, and she remembers going out. She'd won a big pitch, and she remembers going out with the clients and her agency. And because she was the girl at the table, they gave her the wine list and they were like, "Oh, we'll let the lady choose the wine." And Sam opened it and was reading it. And obviously couldn't... She was like, "I couldn't understand French. I didn't know what anything was. I just... I knew red and white, and that was it." And the maître d' came over and just went, "Shall I send the Sommelier over?" And she was like, "Yeah, love. We'll have four bottles of that." And we love that story because that's exactly how it felt. And thankfully, the walls have come down in agencies, and hopefully some of the barriers have come down. But I've got no time for any of that kind of shit with the people that kind of like...that we work with.
And that's why I like Havas. When I started to talk to Xav and Chris, and obviously Chris, I knew from, from Grey, I loved them despite myself. I was like, I really don't want to come back into a big agency. And they're like, "We're not a big agency." And I'm like, that's what all big agencies say. And I went tire kicking around the industry and everybody said, "Oh, you know what, when you get them in a room, their sleeves rolled up, they're leaning over the table, they want to know your business problems. They want to have a proper conversation." And I was like, oh, actually, that sounds really good to me.
Charles: (21:53)
Do you think 2020 is the beginning of the end of the boys' club? I mean, I know you're an outspoken advocate for gender equity. And to your point earlier about the way that corona has allowed people to show up in a different way and it has made work from home a viable part of the organizational construct, do you think that all of that puts more opportunity in front of women to be able to participate on their terms? And does that help to bring the beginning of the end of the boys' club?
Vicki Maguire: (22:26)
I think the... I think the opportunities... I think... I think if we can make 2021 the year that we start to kind of like literally cash the chips in that we've earned, that we really start to talk the talk and not just kind of like use things like gender diversity as a tick or as a hygiene factor on a deck in the middle of a pitch when we can... We will break some of those tropes. And then I think hopefully, it can be. But that's to be seen. That's to be seen. I think the stuff that Creative Equals do around kind of like Have Her Back, that's been going for a couple of years now is a brilliant... is a brilliant, brilliant initiative, and it has got more women back into the industry. But next year I think will be a really interesting year. We've let a lot of people go. This industry has lost... We've shrunk the head counts.
And it'll be interesting to see... When the industry kind of picks up a little bit and we need to start to hire again, it'll be interesting to see whether or not we go back to that, flex those old muscles, that muscle memory kicks in and we hire the same people, or we make use of the ridiculous amount of talent around, both here and abroad, and we start to shape ourselves in a different way. But that change of shape has been coming for a couple of years now. And so I hope that the amplification around everything this year will start to kind of break some of those really... that old guard down. Either that or they're getting so old now they're just going to die which... Which... Yeah. Which will happen. But that stuff has got to change.
It started to change when clients started to ask. When clients started to ask questions, "Excuse me, you four white men who have turned up in your Paul Smith suits and your expensive trainers to talk to me about kind of having the pulse on popular culture…." That was when people started to kind of shit themselves, and that's when any woman was getting... We were getting all the calls. We used to pass them between ourselves, me, [inaudible]. We're just kind of, "You just got a call from X. Yeah, he wants a woman in the department." And you go, fuck's sake. But there are a lot more of us coming up now, so I'm super proud of that.
Charles: (25:21)
Last two questions for you. So if we wind the clock forward 12 months and we're approaching Christmas 2021, what are the two or three things you hope will have happened that will make the world better?
Vicki Maguire: (25:35)
Oh, what an interesting question. Oh my gosh. I hope... Yeah. I hope we... I hope we don't forget what we've been through, because I think we are a lot more accepting, I think we're a lot more tolerant, and I actually don't want to lose that. And people have started to wonder... People have started to realize what is important to them, and it's funny because I've had a few friends in the industry that have dropped out of the industry now, and just went, “No, mate, it's not for me. Not anymore. I'm going to go off and I'm going to do this, I'm going to do that. I'm going to move out of London. I'm going to go to the beach. I'm going to dah, dah, dah, dah." And then I've had a few that have just gone, "All right. I'm going to turbo this. There's a really good energy here, and we're going to do this. We're going to do this and we're going to do that." So I hope that those kinds of like... those little deals that we've done with ourselves, those vows that we've made internally, "When it's all over, we're going to do this." I hope we live by those. I fucking hope that vaccine works or else I'm going to be divorced.
So yeah. I think that's it. I think we've all kind of done a little bit of soul-searching this year, and we've all promised ourselves, "Oh, we're going to do this when it finishes. We're going to do this when it finishes. We're going to do this when we're allowed out." And I think it's... I think it's been too big. It's been too big for us to slip into old behaviors, as personally and in an industry. I think this is seismic, and we did not see it coming. And maybe we kind of needed something like this. So I'm hoping that we hold onto the good. I'm hoping we'll come back to the agency. I'm just sitting here, listening to shit music with a Christmas tree up. It’s like “Home Alone”. There's a few of us, but it's a very big building with a Christmas tree in reception. And I am like ricocheting around on my own for a bit.
Charles: (27:58)
And last question for you, what are you afraid of?
Vicki Maguire: (28:01)
Oh. Oh, fuck. Last but that's a deadly one. What am I afraid of? I am... I'm afraid of the industry slipping back. I'm afraid of... It's weird. Do you know what? It's weird because ask me five years ago and it would have been, maybe I'm afraid of taking the next leap. Maybe I'm afraid of doing this, that, and the other. But I'm not now, to be perfectly honest. I've got to that age, and call it middle age crisis, call it menopausal, or call it HRT, but I'm fucking loving it at the moment. Yeah? I've got a second wave of energy. And I wasn't looking... As I say, I was brought up in the 80s. I kind of... I was a punk. I was rocking against racism. I was doing all of that stuff. And I got to my 50s in this industry, and I was like, my God, there were so few of us around anyway.
And I wasn't looking for another cause, but we are very bad. We're very good at talking. We're very bad at getting our collective shit together. So that makes me afraid, but I can do something about it now. I've got to the level, and I'm gobby enough to start to call stuff out, which is what we've started to do around diversity, around gender, around pay, around London living wage, around getting people... getting parents back into the industry. And I'm getting a little bit impatient now, and I can do something about it. And if I can do something about it, everybody can do something about it. So if you can't, I'm going to call you out, which should be fun.
Charles: (30:00)
That's really well said. Thank you for joining me today. I hope you stay well. I hope your partner stays alive and that you guys have a great end of the year. And I hope that 2021 brings you everything you both wish for.
Vicki Maguire: (30:16)
Oh, bless. Thank you very much. You too, hon. Have a good one.
Charles: (30:20)
Thanks. You too. Take care of yourselves.
Vicki Maguire: (30:21)
Bye-bye.
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