Mark Read of WPP
How much do you know about what’s happening at your company?
"FEARLESS CREATIVE LEADERSHIP" PODCAST - TRANSCRIPT
Episode 361: Mark Read
Here’s a question. How much do you know about what’s happening at your company?
I’m Charles Day. I work with creative and innovative companies. I coach their leaders to help them succeed where leadership has its greatest impact. The intersection of strategy and humanity.
This week’s guest is Mark Read, the CEO of WPP. At last month’s Cannes Lions International Festival of Creativity, WPP was named the most Creative Company of the Year.
Mark took over the role in 2018 from WPP’s founder, Sir Martin Sorrell. It was one of the most publicized and dramatic changes in leadership that the advertising and marketing industries have ever seen.
Taking the company from those turbulent times, to one of relative stability and success, has required a realistic, pragmatic approach.
“I think one of the challenges as CEO is no one ever really tells you the truth. They tell you either what they think you want to hear, or what they want you to hear. So it's very hard to really know exactly what's going on. Probably, actually, the time you become CEO, because you weren't CEO the day before, is the day you have the most accurate view of what's going on in the company.”
Leadership of any creative business is a balancing act. Between dreams and reality. Belief and skepticism. The known and the unknown.
Where you are on each of those scales depends on circumstances that can change by the day and sometimes faster than that.
Which means sometimes you have to make decisions based on instinct.
That’s fine, to a point. But as flawed human beings, even the best leaders among us are sometimes let down by their instincts.
When you’re looking for a place from which to start the process of deciding what happens next, I have found that the best leaders prefer to begin with the truth. In fact, they seek it out.
As Mark says, when you’re in charge, that’s often difficult to find.
But if you’re going to build scalable, sustainable success, finding out what’s really happening is a critical starting point.
That might be difficult and sometimes painful in the short run. And a lot of leaders by-pass seeking out the truth because it makes life more complicated for a while.
But starting with the truth pays for itself in big and small ways. Including in your ability to look yourself in the mirror.
Here’s Mark Read.
Charles: (02:40)
Mark, welcome to Fearless. Thank you so much for coming on the show.
Mark Read: (02:44)
Thanks for having me, Charles. I'm delighted to be with you today.
Charles: (02:49)
Where are you in the world at the moment?
Mark Read: (02:52)
So I'm in London, in Sea Containers, which is is our, I don't want to say head office, because I don't think we have one head office, but our sort of main building now in London. We've been here for about three years, it's a fantastic campus, it's close to many of our people, and have clients coming in. So, it's good to be back a little bit more in the office now, so I'm enjoying it, I have to say.
Charles: (03:16)
Yeah, I know we were both in Cannes last week, and it was just nice to be around a lot of people without really thinking too much about COVID for a change, wasn't it?
Mark Read: (03:24)
Well, yeah. Maybe we should've given a little bit more thought to COVID (laughs) given what people have come back from, what I've heard. Sadly, it's going to be with us for some time. But no, I think, look, Cannes was the same, it was great. The first time the industry's been together since, you know, since 2019 in three years. And it sort of reminds us why we're in this business, how people matter, and creativity, you know, the importance of creativity, which I know we'll talk a little bit about in this session, as well.
Charles: (03:53)
Yep, for sure. let me actually ask you the question I typically ask most people, which is, when did creativity first show up in your life? When are you first conscious of creativity in your life?
Mark Read: (04:04)
I think it's safe to say, later in life than, than earlier in life. I mean, I did, you know, in English terms, double maths, physics, and economics for A-level.
Actually managed to get a C in my English language O-level. So I wasn't high up the creativity spectrum in those days. And I don't know whether I'm high up the creativity spectrum today. But certainly, what I like about WPP, and my first job out of college was at WPP, is it's a creative industry. And so I sort of have grown… I think I have an appreciation for creativity in the sense of, actually probably the first thing was… I was, like, really interested in architecture when I was at university. I don't think I could have done a seven year degree, but I think architecture's probably the first creative discipline that interested me.
And then, you know, being in the business we're in, which is really a creative business, I don't try and do the jobs that our creative teams do, but I am sympathetic. And, much to the horror of many of the people around me, I do sometimes have an opinion on the (laughs) creative work—
Charles: (05:16)
What was it about architecture that attracted you?
Mark Read: (05:20)
I honestly don't know. I just sort of like the sort of sense of buildings, and I can remember going to that HSBC headquarters in Hong Kong, I think I went there in 1987, and seeing that fantastic, I think it's a Norman Foster building—
Charles: (05:36)
Mm.
Mark Read: (05:37)
—that I think they dissembled and take somewhere else, but that sort of fantastic building. And, I think it was a time when architecture, certainly in a UK context, you know, I think we're still world leaders. We were sort of world leaders with, you know, Richard Rogers, Norman Foster, some of the buildings that were built at the time. So, that'd be the first creative discipline, maybe other than music, that I was really interested in.
Charles: (06:01)
How did you express yourself growing up?
Mark Read: (06:05)
(laughs) I don't know. I think I did like, friends, exams, music, all of those things, but I wouldn't… I wasn't painting or drawing. I mean, I look at my daughter who's, you know, I think she's truly creative, but I'm not on that side of the world.
Charles: (06:22)
What drew you into the marketing and media industries?
Mark Read: (06:27)
Yeah, I… you know, it's funny, isn't it? When I left for university, and I'm being a little bit simplistic, but yeah, I went to a prestigious university, went to Cambridge, and the career choices were Goldman Sachs or McKinsey at the time, for ambitious people, if you like. And I didn't really want to do that, I didn't want to be an investment banker, I couldn't see myself, you know, in that environment, and I couldn't see myself as a management consultant. Though briefly, I did endure it. And I looked through the FT for companies I wanted to work with, and WPP struck me as an interesting business, and that's how I ended up here, really. It wasn't a great degree of sophistication. I went from university here to university in the US for a year. I never applied to, you know, a graduate training program, but I wanted to work in a company, and I ended up in this industry, not by great choice, but actually, it turned out, it's been a very good place to work for me. So in that sense, you know, I'm very pleased I did.
Charles: (07:31)
This is probably a bizarre question, but I'm just curious, given your background, do you think 40 years earlier, would you have ended up as a code breaker? Would that have been a path that you chose, given your love of math and science and Cambridge University as a background?
Mark Read: (07:45)
No, not really. Because my love of maths, you know, basically, I sort of... You know, maths takes you to a certain stage, and at a certain point (laughs) you realize that you stop, and that was my A-level. I mean, I look at the people doing maths at university, I couldn't do that, in any way. And it's a bit like… I did economics, and then I had this exchange year in America and I did the first term of the PhD course in economics, and it very quickly proceeded from economics to maths, and I thought, "This is not, this is really not for me."
So I ended up doing a course in political philosophy, a course in Russian foreign policy, ironically today. and a course in economic development. So I kind of changed very much what I was doing. But no, I think, yeah, my maths is fine, but it's not that good.
Charles: (08:44)
You said, you described yourself as ambitious. Did you always want to lead? Was that always something that was important to you?
Mark Read: (08:51)
No, I don't think so. I think it's something that… it comes upon you, maybe when you least expect it. But I certainly didn't… You know, maybe I probably would've had an ambition more to work for myself than ending up working for a big company. But I think over the years, WPP's actually been a good combination of both of those things. But no, I don't think I really… I wouldn't say that I wanted to lead in that sense.
Charles: (09:21)
Let me jump you forward, actually it's an interesting segue. So 2018, you take over WPP from one of the most influential and famous people in the history of the advertising industry. There are probably other descriptions that some people would suggest, but suffice to say, he was and still is an enormous presence. He was also the company's founder. What did that feel like on a human level? What was that period like for you, stepping into that position, that void, under those circumstances?
Mark Read: (09:51)
Yeah, look, I think I've sort of described it as eventful.
Charles: (09:55)
(laughs)
Mark Read: (09:56)
(laughs) The most accurate, and least loaded way of describing it. And nothing can prepare you to run a big company. Nothing can prepare you for that leadership position where you have that mix of events that happen, the responsibility of taking charge of the organization, the volume of decisions that you have to make on a daily basis.
And, you know, as you say, it wasn't the easiest situation. At the same time, you know, I’d worked for the company for many years, and I had, I think, a pretty clear sense of what I wanted to do. And I knew I couldn't run, nor did I want to run, the business in the same way, you know, as it had been run in the past. And that's not a criticism of the way it was run in the past, I think people do things in their own way, and you can't be a pale imitation of somebody else.
So I just kind of stuck to what I wanted to do, and I set out a plan to the board... Because there was a messy six month time where I was interim COO, where you have all the responsibility, and some of the power, but maybe not the clarity. Perhaps that was helpful, so that by the autumn, I set out a direction for the company. And I have to say, I think that the leaders of our agencies were very supportive as well. So, you know, I look back on that time as… it was easier to look back on it, perhaps three, four years later than it is to live through it, I would say.
Charles: (11:43)
Did you ever have any doubt that you could do it? Was that a feeling that you ever encountered?
Mark Read: (11:49)
Not really, no. I don't think so. Or at least, I didn't have any doubt about what I wanted to do, and that I thought that the decisions that I would make would make the company stronger, and we had to see where that would end up. My view was, you know, if you have a volume of decisions you have to make, and you have to make a greater percentage of good ones than bad ones, which I think's been said by someone else, but I think there is a truth in that. You know, if every person I hired was better than the person that left, and identified the things I thought were challenges with the company, and tackled them as systematically as I could, I felt that the company would get stronger. I didn't know how long it would take.
But you think about the situation, you know. Our largest client was up for review, the company hadn't grown for, I think, 18 months, hadn't grown in the US for three years. You know, we had a debt, our net debt was increasing. But those were all little things we had to tackle. We had to fix the situation with the largest client, we had to improve our performance, particularly in the US. We had to reduce our net debt by selling assets. And, you know, we had a plan to do each of those things, and I think I just became quite focused on action as quickly as possible to address the issues as I saw them.
And I think with the benefit of hindsight, I think it's worked, it's worked pretty well, you know? We came out of Cannes as you know, Creative Company of the Year. We won more new business last year than we've ever won. Business performance in the US is much better, our agencies are stronger, our leaders are stronger.
But I think it was really a question of taking action as, not on my own, but with a team as quickly as we could, really. And there was a sense of urgency that was probably not unhelpful.
Charles: (13:52)
I think a lot of leaders get caught up, especially when they move into big, new positions, they get caught up in the anxiety of trying to be perfect. And I had a client two or three years ago who said to me, "What if I'm wrong?" And I said, "Well, you're probably going to be wrong at some point, they're just betting you're going to be wrong less often than anybody else is." Is that part of the philosophy that you kind of instinctively followed? Does that resonate for you?
Mark Read: (14:12)
Yeah, probably. I mean, look, I think the... You have to make some big decisions, and looking back, you realize, what are the big, important decisions? In a funny way, I was in a fortunate situation, because some things were so bad that were some sort of no-regret decisions that we could make. So bringing, let's say, bringing VML and Y&R together was seen by some people as killing this venerable old brand Y&R. I looked at it and saw a business that hadn't grown in five years, and if we didn't fix it, wasn't going to grow in the future. And so I saw that as a very low-risk decision, compared to leaving it as it was.
And if you do that, you immediately impact 13,000 people, 14,000 people in the organization, you know, a sixth of the company, and they're heading in a good direction. Then the same is true, bringing Wunderman Thompson and, Wunderman and J. Walter Thompson together, that's another 15,000 people, another sixth of the company. Then the decision to do a venture capital partnership with Bain on Kantar, and that's another 25% of the company. And then we changed the leadership in a couple of other agencies, and so I could see that the actions we were taking were leading to… if I think about the business as 130,000 people, across the company, we were leading to improvement. So, you know, my sense was a third of the company was in a good place and well-led, a third of the company probably needed some leadership changes, and a third of the company probably needed leadership changes and were structurally in a difficult position.
And we kind of tackled those things as quickly and systematically as we could. And all I could do was rely on the people that ran those businesses to do an excellent job, which they did, in sorting out a whole host of issues and challenges and everything else you do running a company.
Charles: (16:06)
I don't know if you're a cricket follower, but I've been watching the England cricket team evolve over the last three weeks, four weeks in pretty dramatic fashion under new leadership. And one of the things that's been interesting to me is that the new captain, Ben Stokes, is very close friends with the old captain. And he's done an excellent job of not in any way disparaging what had come before, but being very clear about the style and tone, as much of anything else, of the new direction.
You said a few minutes ago that you thought you wanted to change the tone of the company or the style of the company, to some extent. What did you want to bring in that was different from a stylistic standpoint, tonal standpoint?
Mark Read: (16:41)
Look I felt that people wanted to be more empowered inside the organization. I felt that we needed to be more diverse, we needed to talk more explicitly about culture. And we needed to encourage a greater openness of debate, and make sure that people were willing to speak up about what they saw the issues as being and could fix them.
You know, I think one of the challenges as CEO is no one ever really tells you the truth. They tell you either what they think you want to hear, or what they want you to hear. So it's very hard to really know exactly what's going on. Probably, actually, the time you become CEO, because you weren't CEO the day before, is the day you have the most accurate view of what's going on in the company.
Charles: (17:37)
I'm sure that's true.
Mark Read: (17:38)
From then on, you probably cease to know what's really happening. But I think that… I wanted to create more of a culture of WPP in a more positive way, and not to impose our culture on our agencies, but to reflect the culture of our agencies, you know, with greater respect for the work that they were doing and the clients, and really... You know, I sometimes viewed my job as, "Look, now we have 109,000 people in WPP. If, through my actions, I can get 1% improvement in efficiency of our people, I create a thousand more employees effectively, don't I? So is it better for me to do my job 10 times more effectively, create 10 more people, or get everyone else to be 1% more effective, I create 1000 more people?” And I think, in a way, that’s my job, is how do I make the organization much, much more effective, really, isn't it?
Charles: (18:37)
Are you trying to create a WPP culture specifically? I mean, obviously you've got some very powerful cultures within the agencies that you own, but are you trying to create a WPP culture?
Mark Read: (18:46)
I think, I think with our leadership, I think we should have some shared understanding of how we run the business, yeah, I think so, and I think some shared values. But I'm not trying to… You know, everyone has those, like the three words that sums up their culture, or their four words. You know, the words we chose for WPP were, Open, Optimistic, and Extraordinary, which I think should reflect more the type of company we want to create and the culture of our businesses, than three words to impose on our organization. I think each of our businesses has their own distinct culture, but I think people increasingly recognize they're part of something bigger, and, by the way, want to be part of something bigger, and there's a power, and I mean a power in a positive sense, that comes from being part of WPP, but that I hope gives people more opportunity to create better work for our clients when it should create more opportunities for our people. And I think there are some values that we do need to have in common, or we're going to not agree on what to do in certain situations.
So I'd like our cultures to have certain factors in common. But I don't think I want to impose one particular view on the companies, no.
Charles: (19:57)
It's interesting to see how the holding companies have shifted over the last, what, five, 10 years, I guess? from being very much hands-off from a day to day standpoint, to feeling like there is now an opportunity to create a singular... I mean, culture's probably the right reference point. Are there limitations to how far you can go, do you think? I mean, Dentsu are trying to create a whole brand creative entity now. What do you think are the limitations of how far you can take a holding company culture and make it additive?
Mark Read: (20:26)
The examples I like to use are LVMH and—
Charles: (20:29)
Mm.
Mark Read: (20:29)
—Disney, yeah? Which are both, I'd say, creative organizations that have multiple brands and have some cultural elements in common, even if someone that works for Tiffany may think they're different from someone that works for LVMH. I think what's most important, and I use this example a lot is, when they buy another company, people think that company's going get better. Now it's owned by LVM… When LVMH bought Tiffany, I think people thought, "Wow, Tiffany's gonna be a better place to shop. You know, the products will get better, the experience will get better, I'll be more proud to carry the blue bag around, the marketing will get better."
I think too often when some of the holding companies, perhaps even including WPP, bought a business, people thought, "Well, that's gonna kill it," or, "They're gonna send the accountants in," or, "They'll suck the creative lifeblood out of the company." That can't be the right thing, right? We have to be a place that nurtures the brands that we buy, and nurtures the talent within them, to do better work. And that doesn't mean we can live in aspic, you know, we can't have every brand forever.
You know, one of the things I realized when I started that we have like 500 brands, it's way too many, it's too complicated, and it made everyone pull in different directions, it's impossible to manage. But, you know, we should have as many brands as we need, but as few as possible. So I'd say, I'm very comfortable with the brands that we have, and I think it's great that AKQA is a really strong brand, and I want people to know it's part of WPP, because it makes WPP stronger. And hopefully if WPP's a strong brand, it makes AKQA stronger, so it reinforces itself.
And we don't need to call everything WPP to do that, I don't think. So I'm comfortable with the brand architecture that we have. I think it works, I think it gives people clarity about who they work for, and creative businesses don't necessarily get more creative as they get bigger. And I think there's enough in common, particularly at the leadership level, that people are getting much better at collaborating, exponentially better at collaborating, than perhaps they have been in the past.
Charles: (22:30)
Leadership often requires having a distinctive point of view. You know, sometimes you're inspiring, sometimes you're guiding. A lot of what you've just descried is how you came in and created focus, really, I think, and emphasis. It used to be that subject matter expertise was enough, and today that's clearly not true. If you're the leader, you have to have a point of view on almost every issue. And CEO of Disney took a position on Florida's Don't Say Gay legislation, that set off enormous ramifications with the state, some of which has had an impact on the business. You're obviously a very visible leader. How do you navigate this? How do you balance the need to be public within today's dramatic, let's say that, social context, where cancel culture is everywhere?
Mark Read: (23:11)
Yeah, look, I think it's a real challenge. And I think it's been brought to the fore by COVID, you know, I can't think of a… over last two years, starting with how we manage COVID and asking 100,000 people to work from home over a weekend, through to the murder of George Floyd, through to the social media boycott, through to the dreadful impact of COVID in India, in other countries, now Roe v. Wade. There are a lot of issues and challenges to manage, and I think our people expect us to have a point of view on them. What I would say is I think we should look at our purpose, so, what's the purpose of WPP? It's to use the power of creativity. What makes it special? To build a better future for our people, planet, clients, and communities. So it's a little bit literal, but at least it's clear what it is, and that's the guide we use to run the business, and what we've used over the last four years.
So it guides us through people, how we tackle diversity and improving the diversity of our teams, and the inclusivity of our culture. It tackles the planet, what we do around net zero, for our work with clients, the types of clients we want to work with and the type of work we do with them, and then communities, how we embrace challenges like COVID and how we help and how we've helped in Ukraine.
I think that's helped us very quickly come to a decision on situations like what's happened in Russia, what we do on Roe v. Wade. You know, in Russia, we pulled out on March 4th, on Roe v. Wade, we said we'll fund equitable healthcare regimens for all our people in North America and certainly in the United States. When to speak out, not to speak out, I think that comes down to when it's relevant to us, I think, and when we can do something about it. I think if it's an issue that doesn't necessarily touch us and where it's hard for us to have an impact, I don't think that we should speak out about it.
But, you know, Roe v. Wade touches us, we provide healthcare benefits to our people. And the nature of those benefits is of concern to us as a company. And it would be a political decision to provide travel benefit, and it's a political decision not to provide travel benefit. So you can only try and do the right thing in that situation.
So I've tried very much, I think, to only really communicate on those points where we could take action as a company, or where they touch our operations directly. I certainly don't want to run for elected office, or try to pretend like I'm running for elected office, but there are things that touch us as a company, and therefore we should… we have to tackle them, really.
Charles: (26:05)
How do you think people see you?
Mark Read: (26:09)
I don't know, I mean, the glib answer would be (laughs) you would have to ask them. But I think that the pandemic, ironically, although people have been more separate, it brought WPP much more together as a company, to your point about culture. It's forced us to make decisions as a company for the first time. Everyone is working from home because that's clearly not something we can approach office by office or entity by entity. So I think that’s given me a much wider angle on people, and I think that it’s made me much more accessible to people inside the company, and broken down a lot of barriers that maybe would typically exist between the CEO and people in the organization. So yeah, I want people to see me as accessible and caring about how they are.
At the same time, I recognize I'm running a profit-making organization, and I'll have to balance those two goals. And I've learned from reading the comments in our town hall, you can't please everybody all of the time, but you can just try to make the right decisions on the decisions that are in front of you, and hope that people trust you to do the right thing, really.
Charles: (27:32)
How do you react when you read something that's critical? And a lot of people, obviously, have a hard time with that. And, to your point, you're never going to please everybody, especially when you've got this many people working for you. How do you personally feel when you read something that's critical of what you've done?
Mark Read: (27:46)
I think I can be… have broad enough shoulders to see that not everyone is going to agree with me, and I understand, whether I agree with what they're saying or not agree with what they're saying, they don't know everything that's going in my head, and I just take it as it comes, really. You have to really have broad shoulders in this job. But it doesn't really bother me, to be honest.
Charles: (28:11)
Yeah, I would imagine it would be hard to do the job if that stuff really got to you all the time. What does it take for you to change your mind about something?
Mark Read: (28:20)
Well, I hope that, when the facts change, I change my mind. I do talk to my colleagues around me. I'm probably, I think, quite rational, but also quite an intuitive decision-maker. And so I tend to get to what I think quite quickly. And if I feel it strongly, I'm probably not the easiest person to change my mind on a topic. But I do, (laughs) I do change it when the facts change, or if people have a good argument for why things should be different. And I think that there are many people around me who I debate things with who I trust, and my view on particular things will change as time goes on. Don't ask me for an example where I’ve changed my opinion.
Charles: (29:13)
Okay, fair enough. Racial diversity has obviously been such a huge focal point around the world and obviously within the industry, particularly, I think, since the murder of George Floyd. It feels sometimes that that's come at the expense of the conversation around gender diversity, which really filled a lot of people's attention before that. And there are still a staggering lack of women in senior leadership positions, not just in this industry or these industries, but in most. How does this industry address both? And when is it realistic to think that this industry could actually be leaders in diversity - both racial and gender?
Mark Read: (29:48)
Well, look, I think, I mean, it comes back to your criticism point. I think after George Floyd's murder, we had to examine our track record on racial diversity. I think that it's pretty clear to me, I've said this in public, we hadn't done enough at WPP. By the way, nor do I think anywhere in our industry, nor in most other industries, had done enough. And, if people were to criticize me for that, I would say, “Well, that's a fair criticism,” you know?
I think to your point about over-focusing on racial diversity over gender diversity, if anything, we'd had the reverse before then. And I think we have to realize that… have to think about representation—
Charles: (30:31)
Mm-hmm.
Mark Read: (30:32)
And the representation is, does our workforce represent society? And the answer is not yet, but better. We have a better gender representation than a racial representation, and we have, it's better at more junior levels than more senior levels. Inside my own leadership team, I think seven out of our top 20 people on our exco are women, and we have two people who are not white on our leadership team. So not perfect, but it's, I'd say, heading in the right direction, and I say, as WPP overall we’re making good progress. You know, the head of our UK business, Karen Blackett, and the head of our US business, Michael Houston, are two of the most senior Black executives in our industry, and it's fantastic to have them in those roles.
I think we have to focus on representation and belonging more broadly and try and create... because the processes that are going to create equity to men and women, they're going to create equity across the racial divide as well. And I think we have to create a culture where people can be themselves at work, where they see leaders who look like them, and I'm particularly keen in our industry, really, making more progress in the creative department. Often the creative departments are the people that everyone looks up to the most, we've just come back from Cannes, and there I think we've got the most work to do both on gender and racial diversity. And ironically, I think if we can make progress there, that would have the biggest impact on our organization overall as well, so then that will be productive.
Charles: (32:10)
Yeah, I agree with that. I think often the problem is that the supply chain just doesn't work I mean, the supply chain still produces predominantly white and predominantly male candidates, I think.
Mark Read: (32:20)
But therein lies the problem. Like, if the supply chain isn't working, we're not going to the right places, right?
Charles: (32:26)
Yeah.
Mark Read: (32:27)
So we have to... You know, in one of… under our racial equity program we funded a thing we called Detroit Experience Center in Detroit, as part of our Detroit campus, it's going to train young people in Detroit who are predominantly Black with the disciplines of digital marketing and creativity, and make our industry feel like an attractive career to them. Because we've got to fix all of these things. It's not enough to say, "Well, we're not finding the right applicants," we're maybe not fishing in the right pool or we're not creating the right level of applicants, we have this sort of next-gen leadership program where, one of the benefits of the pandemic is it moved from being internships, which often sadly were based on who you knew, to much more distance-based, next-gen leadership program. We now have, I think, 2,700 participants, much greater diversity of participants bringing people into our industry. So I think there's things that we can do, some of them using technology, some of them we just have to try harder.
Charles: (33:30)
What do you think the future looks like, particularly the future of the office? I mean, I'm conscious of the fact that businesses such as yours have hundreds of thousands, millions of square feet of real estate.
Mark Read: (33:39)
Yeah.
Charles: (33:39)
—with long, long, long-term leases, and massive financial commitments. It's hard to imagine that that is not having an impact on how companies are thinking about what the future looks like. What do you think the office of the future looks like?
Mark Read: (33:52)
Well, I think the office of the future looks quite like the office I'm in at the moment, hopefully. Because we've been thinking about our campuses which are, to me, a physical manifestation of WPP strategies. They say “WPP” above the door, but inside the building we have our agency brands, you know, Ogilvy, where I am, Wavemaker, Landor, and are more collaboration space dedicated to the agency, there's space where we can collaborate, they’re temple to creativity if you like. I want a client to stand outside and say, "Everything I need to be successful I can get from the group of people there," or an employee who wants to join us come and say, "Wow, I could have a fantastic career working in the companies in that building."
So I think our campus is a physical manifestation of our strategy and where people actually want to come and work. So we have to inspire people to come into our offices, we can't instruct them to. I think those days are gone. But I think the bigger question about offices is less, actually, to do with where people work, but more about the relationship between employer and employee. And I think people have got a great degree of flexibility and freedom during the pandemic, and they're not going to give that up. And I think that's particularly true in the United States. And I think part of the way to encourage people to come back into our offices or our campuses, as we call them, is to say, "Look, it's not going to be five days a week, it's not going to be from 8:00 in the morning 'til 7:00 at night, you're not going to be hanging around here at 7:30 because you get free food if you stay 'til 8:00 or a taxi home at 9:00, and we're not expecting you to do that. Actually, you're gonna come in the office because you like seeing your colleagues and it's a great space to collaborate, and the clients are working here. And after work you can go out for a drink with your friends, and maybe on a Friday or Monday or even a Wednesday, you want to work from home because you need some focus time, and you're just going to head down and do calls or write papers, then do your work there.” And I think it's much more a flexibility and empowerment question than it is about physical location. And so, I think physical location helps, but we have to show our people we trust them to do their work wherever they do it and on their own terms, really.
Charles: (36:11)
Yeah, people who listen to this podcast have heard me talk about the fact that I think we have to have a focus on why people should come in the office as opposed to when. I think that's the—
Mark Read: (36:20)
Yep.
Charles: (36:20)
—that's the scalable, sustainable reference point.
Mark Read: (36:22)
Yep.
Charles: (36:24)
Clearly your career is not over and not coming to an end any time soon. But I'm just wondering, as you look back on what you have done so far, do you have any regrets?
Mark Read: (36:33)
I wouldn't say I have massive regrets. Maybe… I think one of the challenges I always have with getting away from… I worked in head office, if you like, and that's obviously a very seductive place to work. And maybe I took too long to go off and run a business. Maybe I should've… I did start one business, you know, Web Rewards, internet startup in the first dotcom bubble, '99 to 2001, and it was great experience. It wasn't the world's most successful experience, but we ended up merging the company with another company, and that continued, and we grew from zero to 25, 30 people over about a 15-month period, and then last minute dotcom floated, and if you remember the whole market collapsed and we all moved on.
Maybe I wish I'd worked abroad more. I think that people today, I think the good news is the opportunities available today are much broader, and much more entrepreneur-inspiring. When you leave university, you can work in a startup, there's a fantastic startup ecosystem in the UK. It's not that kind of, “Which consulting firm are you gonna work with when you leave,” if you know what I mean? So I think that actually there's tons of opportunities for people today, which is something I think, actually, that the government didn't do a bad job of encouraging, in a way.
Charles: (38:00)
Last two questions for you. How do you lead?
Mark Read: (38:06)
I think I try to empower people whilst, I wouldn't say remaining in control. (laughs) It's like a contradiction. But it's probably a lot of contradictions in leadership. I think I have a sense of where I want the company to go, and I think I have a much clearer vision now of the importance of communication and communicating that to people, and realizing that I need to get the best out of people.
I try to be as natural as I can. Open, collaborative, consultative. At the same time, the buck stops with me at the end of the day, and if things go wrong, I have to take responsibility for them. And that means that sometimes that final decision is mine, if you know what I mean. So I think it's a delicate balance, isn't it? Between empowering people and not giving the guidance and support that they need. I think I probably lead quite instinctively, you know, I probably read... I've never been a great reader of business books, if you like. Someone sent me The One-Minute Manager, which I've yet to find a minute to read. Someone told me it was the best book ever written on management. I’ve yet to read it, but I promise, Charles, I will read it.
Charles: (39:43)
And the last question for you. What are you afraid of?
Mark Read: (39:48)
I think since COVID we've all learnt that there's lots of things to be afraid of, but we tend to manage our way through it. You see things that happen, but you learn, at the end of the day, to cope with them. So I wouldn't say I'm afraid of anything in particular. Yeah, I do feel... You know, with these jobs you can feel the stresses and strains of the job. No day goes by without some good news and, frankly, some bad news. And you have to have your eyes set on the ultimate prize, is the company overall doing well? And I think we are doing well. We won Creative Company of the Year at Cannes. My sense is people want to come and work at WPP. They think there's something here that's going on they wanted to be part of. And if I'm playing a role in creating that, then I think I'm having some success.
At the same time, there'll be times when we lose clients and times that people resign. I wish they wouldn't resign. But I don't think any of that's going to derail the ultimate success of the company, if you know what I mean. Certainly you have to have your eye firmly fixed on the bigger picture. And that, I think, is always the challenge. It's like, the stresses and strains of individual decisions and conversations versus, trying to keep your eye on , is the organization moving forward and is it growing? Because I think growth's the most important thing for companies and for people. And are we living up to our purpose as best we can, and are we leaving something behind that we're all proud of, if you like?
Charles: (41:35)
I want to thank you very much for coming on the show. I talk a lot on this podcast about leadership sitting at the intersection of strategy and humanity, and this conversation strikes me as a pretty powerful example of that, so thank you so much for sharing.
Mark Read: (41:48)
Thanks very much, Charles, and thanks for your questions. I’m (laughs) not quite sure what the answers are, but anyway, I'm sure we'll find out.
—————
Let us know if there are other guests you’d like to hear from, and areas you’d like to know more about or questions you have.
And don’t forget to share Fearless with your friends and colleagues.
If you’d like more, go to fearlesscreativeleadership.com where you’ll find the audio and the transcripts of every episode.
If you’d like to know more about our leadership practice, go to thelookinglass.com.
Fearless is produced by Podfly. Frances Harlow is the show’s Executive Producer. Josh Suhy is our Producer and editor. Sarah Pardoe is the Media Director for Fearless.
Thanks for listening.
