Gareth Healey: Building agency culture to stand out

Pauline 0:13

Hi Welcome to the den! How are you?

Gareth Healey 0:16

Hi Pauline, and very well, thank you. Thank you very much. It's great to be with you.

Pauline 0:21

Thank you so much. And thank you very much for taking the time to talk to me today. So I think it would be only fair to start with asking you to tell everyone a little bit about your story, the past and the present and what do you do now.

Gareth Healey 0:40

Wonderful, thank you very much. Yeah, well, I'll certainly do that. I've spent my entire working career, which is now quite extensive, sadly, 25, 30 years, in agencies, in marketing agencies. So I started off many years ago after university as an account handler in an agency, which I loved, and then subsequently moved to an agency. with another agency which I bought actually, I did a management buyout, I bought an agency I worked for with two other partners. we ran that business for, well there was two of us eventually, we bought the third partner out. But we ran that business together as two people for 15 years or more. It was based here in the UK where I'm based, in the North of England primarily, but with a London office. and it was quite a sizeable business. got up to 175 people, 12 million turnover. Retail marketing was our sort of bag. we were a design agency originally, but we sort of had a more integrated marketing offer eventually for retailers. So ran that business for 15 years, eventually decided that I wanted a change and do something different. So this was around 2017. So my partner bought me out. So I exited the business. He wanted to carry on. I wanted something different. And I thought at that stage, that's nearly nine years ago now, that's flown, that I would do something completely different. I wouldn't be working in agencies anymore. I would have a bit of some time off and then do something, something completely different. But here I am, 2026, still talking every day about agencies, which Which is a good thing because I found after I'd sort of left my business that what actually happened was founders that are new or knew of me started to contact me and ask me about problems or things they were dealing with that I sort of recognized. And I realized that I enjoyed still talking about solving those problems or looking into those opportunities and running the. running agencies and found that, know, like me, they found in me somebody that I appreciated that someone had sort of been there and done it and would help them and talk to them with a bit of sort of straight talking without trying to sell them a course or anything. And I really enjoyed it. so I've been advising agencies for the last eight years and as a consultant, as an advisor, as a non-exec director, whatever label you want to attach to it, I'm not particularly worried about, but I help agencies grow and solve some of the problems and ultimately grow, maybe to exit, or if that's what their objective is, or maybe just grow to... provide a more sustainable business and a bigger business and something that they can continue to operate as a lifestyle agency. I'm not one for saying that exits are the only route. They are for many, but not for everybody. But as long as growth is involved in terms of business growth and personal growth, that's what I'm interested in. So that's what I do now, yeah.

Pauline 4:02

nice, very exciting journey. And I would love to ask you to tell me two stories that were the most exciting to you. The first one would be about your experience as the agency owner, like something that kind of completely changed the way you operate, the way you work, something that was very like interesting and unexpected. And the same story from you working with agencies as an advisor. And how different are they?

Gareth Healey 4:37

Yeah, so how I changed how I work, when I bought my agency, so I was one of the senior account people, we bought the agency from the founder, of course, and it was quite a family orientated business. The husband and wife ran the business and their daughter worked in the business as well. And there was many other people, it was quite a big. big business even at that stage so it wasn't all family members but there was quite a family feel to it which was lovely which was great for that time and was very successful for them but when we bought the business the three of us had worked there for a while but we weren't a family and we weren't connected together we were sort of three guys as it happened to be and people that worked in the business so we couldn't run it in the same way with the same culture we had to Develop that culture and and and change it really not because it was bad just because it wasn't a culture that we could follow because we weren't family we weren't that that sort of That that we didn't have that approach and when we couldn't have grown it with that approach I don't think either that so this has a bit of a ceiling. So I'm very proud of that that Change that we helped that well we we instigated ourselves and it was quite a delicate operation And we were very inexperienced at that time to change that sort of way of working and that culture and in the business. And we had to be sensitive to the people that were already worked in the business and the previous owners who for a while were still involved in terms of we owed them some money. So they still had an interest in the business for a time. couldn't change it completely overnight and wouldn't have wanted to. But we changed it. And as I say, quite inexperienced. guys not run a business before. So was a very delicate operation and could have gone horrendously wrong, frankly, but we managed through, I guess, a mixture of luck and talent. I'll leave other people to decide which balance of that, what it was, but

Pauline 6:47

Thank

Gareth Healey 6:49

we managed to change, yeah, change. So not completely change the business. We kept the good bits that we could keep, but just the way it was managed and run that business, we had to change it to some degree because we weren't. you know, we needed to grow it and we weren't family, we didn't operate in that way. So very proud of that, very exciting at the time and very looking back still something of pride and something I'm very proud of. I guess from a current story or a current sort of experience of mine working with other agencies, I do see family cultures, if I can call them that as well, currently, which are never bad. But they're never, I'm not saying that's a bad thing, but it does limit growth if you're very much, maybe family cultures are wrong to say, but if you lead the business with that sort of personality led approach, the culture of the agencies, I work with, businesses in general, guess, having a personality at the top of the businesses are great in many ways, but it can also... lead everything just to be dependent on one person and when that person can't be there or isn't there or it grows too big for them to be to manage the business in that sort of personality driven way many people can't understand that many people can't understand that what's happened i've grown the business to 10 15 people and it's me and it's everything surrounds me and i just want to go to 20 or 25 and suddenly everything, well lots of things start to fall apart a little bit and people often can't understand, they don't know what they've done wrong, they haven't done anything wrong actually. They've just, they need to move on to a different way of managing the business. that can cause, that's what I see parallel to what we managed to do quite successfully, but we were I guess in our position given the management buyout, a bit more aware of it. than people that have grown founders that have grown the business and grown it for five, six, seven years, whatever it might be, got up to a certain level and then need to sort of go on to the next phase. They can't see it often. They can't see the what got this. a phrase certainly in the UK of what got you here doesn't necessarily

Pauline 9:15

Mm.

Gareth Healey 9:16

get you there to the next phase, which is something that I was very aware of.

Pauline 9:22

Interesting.

Gareth Healey 9:22

Yes.

Pauline 9:22

I mean, I would love to follow up on that. what is like now that you are working with the founders who are growing their agencies, growing their consulting studios, like what are the typical patterns that you see them getting right and see them getting wrong as they start to scale from, let's say 20 or like 15 people. and try to grow to a bigger organization like 30, 45, what are the typical patterns they get right and wrong around? Managing their people, managing their team, interacting with them and all of their related people processes.

Gareth Healey 10:06

Sure, yeah. There's lots of things. How would I succinctly answer that? I think when you're around about 15 people, let's say, currently, which is for an agency, most agencies is beyond maybe a million pound revenue, but they're there about generally, not for everybody, but that would be around that mark. I think the agency only that is where things start to often not break but get stretched. So that's where that sort of pivotal point is the way you can get to sort of 12, 15 people business in this sector currently with AI and stuff that might change those numbers but never let but but but the in the future we currently get to that sort of level really off. out of your own sort of skills and expertise and industry and being ultimately somebody that can be an entrepreneur and somebody that can manage people and recruit people. It's not easy, it's not like follow just happens, but nevertheless you can get to that stage. But then when you get around that stage, I think that's when things on the people front starts to creak a bit. And I think people often miss what the people often miss at that stage is maybe, the job then is clarity. You would not probably even in my sort of back past, you were probably in at that stage more than one room or around more than one table in an office. These days, inherently, you will probably not even be around a table in a room. You'll be either completely or for a large portion of the time remote working. So the communication and clarity over what is required, what needs to be done. whether what's good, what's bad, what needs to be, you know, so getting everything, communicating and writing everything down so that you, clarity is a big role there. When you get up to 30 people, that's still necessary, but you need certainly approaching 30, you need, most people need a management team. Everybody needs a management team of some sort. You need help. You can't be, you might be a genius, but you can't spin all the blades together. So you need, you need your sort of first management layer. And that's often a tricky one because most people promote from within, of course, which for all good reasons, but they promote based on performance rather than that. They promote great people that are good at their job, not necessarily great managers. So that comes into play. think as you get bigger than that, know, 50 people, this is where sort of culture is always important, but culture really sort of starts to... Explode if I can use that term in an agency or is in danger of exploding I suppose really in a people business because culture when you get to 50 people is influenced not just by the founder is influenced by many people by people in the management team and if they're not aligned if they're not they don't all have a similar approach and buy into the culture then sort of little people start to take leads from different people and the culture becomes very muddled so I think that's a difficult one then and beyond 100 people You you're running a different business really, you're not really running an agency or as the founder, you're not really running the business you're running or you should be running the leadership team and different skills are required there to run a business through a leadership team, managing and motivating and leading senior leaders in a business that by that time will probably have come from elsewhere, they won't have all. Growing up with you through your business they will have come from other places and learnt other things and have different points of view and rightly so that's a great thing but it's a lot harder to manage that than people often estimate.

Pauline 14:02

I love it. mean, I have so many follow up questions. I mostly want to follow up on two topics. One, it's all about like how do you build this first layer of managers in your company? The reason I want to get your perspective on that is that I heard from someone who inspired me like and who helped me to grow at some point that the most difficult transition generally, it's not necessary from leading self to leading others because you still have like direct control over what you do. But the most challenging transition is from leading others to leading leaders.

Gareth Healey 14:45

Yes.

Pauline 14:46

And because you kind of start acting through a remote control. And I think it looks like you were talking about something So I would love to get a bit more of the flavor on that topic. So what are

Gareth Healey 15:02

Yeah.

Pauline 15:03

the successful cases? What are the best practices to make sure you get this first leadership team right as soon as possible?

Gareth Healey 15:13

Yeah, totally. Yeah, that's exactly the of point I was making really, those transitional periods, know, operating in many cases, if you're a founder of an agency, from operating on your own to starting to employ people and managing the people to then growing and starting to employ or need managers to manage some of the people, the management layer, as you've just said, and managing those managers to growing even bigger and those people are... maybe the same people, but they're not just managers reporting back to you or they're leading departments, maybe even leading businesses within the group, within a group maybe. the transition, so as a founder from sort of day one up to day whatever it might be when you're leading a bigger team, if you manage to do that, then there is a growth, the business has grown. But you need to grow as a leader as well. Grow as a manager and as a leader. That's one of the big things that obviously needs to happen. you can't do one. But the business won't You will grow the business effectively without growing as a leader. But sometimes the business does grow and It's not just your growth doesn't keep pace. So as an example, an agency of 15 people is to take a hypothetical situation and suddenly wins another big account or big clients with, you know, 500 grand's worth of 500,000 pounds worth of revenue overnight. And clearly they need to step up and or recruit maybe another few people to manage that that new account. And that recruitment is a job in itself, but also suddenly that agency has grown maybe by 20, 25%, whatever it is. And the leader needs to grow almost overnight as well in how they manage it. They can't manage it in the same way because they've got more people, more responsibilities. They need a different way of transitioning into this bigger business. And that's where I think often people don't see that. Or if they see it, they don't realize just how important that is. or maybe they do not recognize that that is required, but they either don't have the skills or the advice or capacity to be able to make that change. Maybe in some cases they don't want to make that change. That's not what they want to do. They enjoy working directly with people in a smaller team. They've won some business over here, which has overnight sort of grown the team. And that's a great thing. They're celebrating that. That's a success. But also maybe it's something really they didn't actually fundamentally want because they want they're more comfortable operating a smaller business rather than a bigger business. So many different factors. the key is to recognize that if you ignore that sort of stuff or don't see it, then you can't, you know, you can't do anything about it. And if you, but if you do recognize that needs to happen, you can sort of get people to help you with that change or start to sort of. Talk to people about how that change is happening and get their feedback and things on what you're doing as a leader so that you can Hopefully grow with the business as it were

Pauline 18:32

And what are the elements you think agencies should start putting in place as they start growing from 15 to 20, 20 to 30 people, et cetera? What are the key kind of patterns or processes or elements that they should start establishing to make sure they can kind of meaningfully scale without, if they want, as you said, without being burned out and burning out their people as well.

Gareth Healey 19:16

Yeah, That's a great question. mean, there's a number of things again, but I think the key one for me is I have this thing about, know, founders, actually, despite what I've just said, founders don't scale businesses, systems scale businesses, processes scale businesses. So the first thing or the thing that you fundamentally need as the business starts to grow. And maybe you recognize this and do this over time gradually because the business grows reasonably gradually. Or maybe if something happens like an event that happens overnight, like I've just described, you need to really react.

Pauline 19:52

Yeah.

Gareth Healey 19:54

You need to work in a different way. So you need to work in a much more structured, systemized, process driven way. If you haven't been doing already and in agencies, in my experience, in the past, whether that changes in the future, will. to some degree, I think with AI, this will be a positive of AI if people can harness it. You need to work in a more systemized process way and where an agency in the past might have got to be on 15 people with people knowing what they do and what they're doing, but generally sort of being a team that just gets things done and just sort of mucks in and gets work in the business and out of the door. but does it in their own way and maybe does it in pockets of people doing slightly, working slightly differently, but getting to the end result. know, that has, that can happen, that does happen, that works. But once you get to a certain size and you want to grow even, and particularly if you want to grow even bigger, then that falls over. That doesn't work. People get confused. People get burnt out, as you've said. Some people carry the load more than others. There's confusion, there's mistakes, you can get in a real mess. So systems scale, processes scale. So the first thing I would say is get your processes and systems, if they're not clear, mapped out and clear and making sure everybody is aware of them. And I think particularly in the age of AI, this is really important because you can't apply automation or AI. capabilities to to chaos. You need to you need to apply it to data and apply it to processes and systems. So, you know, if it's always been important this point, I think in growing businesses, but now it's even more important with that for people because the people that just continue to try and operate in a sort of, yeah, team collegiate, let's all just gather together and get stuff done like we've always done. those days are numbered I'm afraid but those processes systems getting those in place we were in credit in my agency career running an agency actually again and this probably was a bit of loco certainly something that the original founder many years ago I guess put in place but we were one of us the secrets of our success at that time was processes systems we were we were a creative at an agency design agency but we were heavily managed via processes and systems and that actually that really helped us run the business, helped us grow the business and this is long before, well certainly AI was in common, you know, in common use as it is today. It's probably not before AI fundamentally. If you look at the history books and all that sort of stuff but AI is in its current form long before that but we processes and systems was our strength.

Pauline 22:55

love it. And I want to connect two thoughts that you shared. So one, in the beginning of the conversation, you said that as the company goes to around 50 people, one of the biggest challenges was culture, because you start having people that are coming from different places and different... industries, backgrounds, maybe different roles, et cetera. And then I love the point on the processes. So I would love to kind of hear from you what are the things agencies can put in place in order to start protecting this culture as they grow? And what is the difference between an agency or like a boutique that does look like a great place to be from the outside and the one that is actually a very nice place to be at. So how do you build this and are there any secret sauce that you can look for when you are trying to assess it from the outside?

Gareth Healey 24:06

Yeah, no, that's a good question. So if I'm understanding that right, then there are agencies that, well, many businesses are great places to work, of course. Hopefully there are some that aren't, but hopefully that's the minority. But there are many businesses that promote themselves as being great places to work, aren't there, and win or certainly apply for awards and... different schemes and things to get recognition for that, which I work with agencies that do that. I'm positive about that. We in my own business did that ourselves some years ago, of course. Now they may still be doing it. That agency still exists, but we entered regularly the Sunday Times newspaper, best companies to work for and local schemes as well for that reason. I think what sometimes people miss is that those those schemes and those awards and doing that focuses people's minds on the culture and whether this is a good place to work in the business so that's not a bad thing is it that's having having some sort of direction and ambition to win those sort of things is is good because it applies people's minds to doing the right things right and I but I think also it's a great recruitment tool of course, so it's a great if you can sort of you know that if it attracts talent and But I think that the thing it was whilst those things often what I see happening is those Agencies that that look like they're great places to work and maybe even have the odd award here and there They invest in the optics really. The agencies that I find that are actually really great places to work don't particularly focus on the awards, they focus on doing the things right in the business. And sometimes those things are not the most glamorous tasks. So the glamorous or the visible expression of this sort of stuff is where we see great places to work that are and you know that they're offering lots of perks and incentives for people to work there and and a very good at promoting themselves as a in terms of their employer brand and the fact that they have away days and the fact that they have gym memberships and free breakfasts and on certain days or all week or whatever it might be and all that stuff is good. you know, all that stuff, I'm doing me wrong, all that stuff is And all that stuff is far more necessary and expected now in today's world than it was in my days of running an agency. know, I have a son and a daughter who are 22 and my son's 22 and my daughter's 24 and both of them actually work in the agency space. My daughter works in an agency and that sort of stuff is expected, acknowledged. You know seen as a great thing and it is a great a great thing but really underneath I think you know those things attract talent like I say, but they don't necessarily necessarily retain it because one everybody's Generally does it to a greater or lesser degree everybody's not unique anymore to give people breakfast or to give people We used to have in my day I was in danger of sounding like an old cojab, but back in my day, but not so long not that long ago, but we We had free fruit, free massage, free head massages and neck massages in the agency. And at that time, was quite innovative stuff. Nobody else did that. That was what won awards for us. But now everybody, or most people do that or something similar or something comparable. So everybody sort of raised the bar, which is great on that sort of stuff. But I think, like said, that attracts talent in. or sort of makes people choose your business to come and work for. But it doesn't retain people. People regularly move jobs for either better perks or more money or whatever it might be. But the things that really retain people is the less glamorous stuff and it's that is the hard yards really. It's having the structure in place as a business. Having a clear hierarchy in the business. Now I'm not one for having layers and layers of people, layers and layers of roles and different hierarchies. I'm not one for huge hierarchies, but I am. I do see and some of the things, but something that does frustrate me a lot is people that use the flat structure mantra overly because I find often many people talk about flat structures and no hierarchies because they're lazy, frankly, because they don't want to confront the hard work. of putting a structure in place and having hard difficult conversations with people about performance. They say, well, we're a flat structure, we're all working in this together, let's all just muck in. But I think people need structure, know, particularly in a growing business and even people, Gen Z people working in businesses today, they want to see where they're going even more so than they did now. You know, they want, well, I'm here, I want to see how I get to there on the ladder and when I get there on the ladder. So I think people crave structure. I think you've to have consistent leadership in the business and this isn't just about people saying, hey we have gym memberships and let's enter some awards. This is consistent leadership through good and bad times, through difficult and great times. Where you get feedback, you get transparent communication about what's happening in the business. You tell people what's expected of them. so they're clear on what they need to do. And you tell people when they get it wrong. You tell people when something isn't quite up to standard or something, a mistake's happened and you do it timely in a timely way and you do it so that you help the individual understand. But also you do it so you help your business improve and make sure you don't make those mistakes again or do that low substandard work again. So there's. Well, I think the biggest thing, I could sum all this up, to say, one of the biggest factors is not the award, it's not the glass door reviews or the gym memberships. It's having a culture of what I call a culture of accountability. So you've got people that work in your business that at every level, not all just the senior people, every level know what's expected of them, know what they need to do and are accountable for it, making sure that it gets done and they don't need the other people that they're higher up to tell them. they know that's my thing. I do that. I always do that. I know how to do it. It's a good standard and I don't just walk away from it if it's not completed or whatever. make sure it's done and handed off to the next person. that accountability in agencies is one of the big challenges, think. The big weaknesses in many businesses that they've just not got that. They've got certain people carrying the bulk of the work and the bulk of the responsibility or accountability. And everybody else these days just sort of coming in and... doing a job and then going home.

Pauline 31:23

I mean, again, 300 million topics I would love to follow up on, but I'll need to select the best ones. I like this concept because I think it also kind of allows to build a company where, like, if you have a structure, it allows to have an organization where the operations and the growth is fair. And I think... Now, with like so many different generations working together at the same time, it really creates a difference because people start having the voice and they start having very clear accountability based on what they bring and what they produce rather than, I don't know, some cultural background or... personal background, et cetera. So I like this idea, but I want to kind of ask you a little bit about two topics. you told, I really liked the angle about the Gen Z who is entering the workforce. I mean, also would love to hear your stories from more personal perspective, like someone growing those individuals. And how does this all live in the AI era? I mean, I think when I was entering design, we kind of had the luxury of not choosing right away what kind of designer we wanted to be, what we were heading, et cetera. Now with AI being able to produce to... to a good extent, I would say the job a junior designer or a junior professional would do like five, seven years ago. Like what is the way for them to enter the workforce and what an agency should think about as they are kind of thinking about the succession of the generation and new talent coming in the game.

Gareth Healey 33:33

Yeah, that's a really great topic, a really important one. I wish I had all the answers to that one. don't, but I'll give you some views, of course, as as that's what you're asking me to do. I would say from what you said there, Pauline, there's two angles here, isn't there? There's the employer angle, the AP

Pauline 33:52

Yeah.

Gareth Healey 33:52

is in my case, and the employee, the potential employee person, the individual, and if it's the junior or younger people, Gen Z. university leavers or young people entering the market now and it's, I've got personal experience of that because I've got people of that age, my son and daughter. I've got personal experience actually, my daughter works in an agency, she's an SEO, she's the eldest, she's 24. But my son actually, which wasn't a plan of either of us, but my son is actually working with me.

Pauline 34:23

very nice.

Gareth Healey 34:24

So which is nice, was never the plot because Calum's a psychology graduate of last year and loves psychology, did really well at incredibly well at it got a first in his degree, amazing. But he'd never shown any interest in marketing agencies for 21 years. He'd never shown the remote slightest bit of interest in it. But he came out of university and he knew he didn't want to be a. a psychotherapist or a therapist and that wasn't his area of interest in psychology at all. And he didn't really know what he wanted to do, but he's mad on AI. And we decided, well, if you want to use AI and develop a career in AI, I wrote a book a few years ago for agencies and it's called Stand Out or Die. But there's many themes in it, but one of the themes is focus is having a target audience. So we said, well, if you're going to do AI, Callum, why do we have the target audience? Why don't we focus on agencies? So that's what he's doing. So it's a long way of telling you that I've actually got.

Pauline 35:28

You are about to build a second AI native agency with your son, which is a family business.

Gareth Healey 35:34

Which was never the plan but that seems to be the direction we're going but I've got even though Calum has been very well and obviously he lives with us still and he's my son. I've experienced working with him as a younger person already in the last 12 months. I've got personal experience. Anyway coming to your point, just looking at the individual from one perspective, the young employee. I would agree with you, think what you just touched upon there, think to be focused, to be more clear if you are a young person entering the agency industry or wanting to or any industry for that matter, but let's again, let's take agencies. I think it's if you can and people let's face it at that age are not often clear, they're not often clear for a long while if they ever are about what they want to do, but having a direction and being able to say, know, that's the sort of, this is the role I want. is more important than it's ever been because employers I think need more focus, they've got to be more focused and they're recruiting more strategically than just bringing in graduates or any actually not just graduates but bringing in young people en masse. I think there's much less of that going on and there will be in general going forward so they'll be wanting certain people for certain roles. So having a focus as an employee, as a young person is one thing. Of course, having AI knowledge is another, whether you're crazy on it like Callum is or whether you just, you know, clearly you embrace it because you're AI native, And then as an employer, as an agency employer, I suppose they've got a real dilemma, our agency friends, with this because people have been and are still the lifeblood of agencies, of course, they're people businesses. But with AI... you know, that is going to come under threat and under, which could be a good thing. say threat's probably the wrong word. That's going to come under pressure. And that could be a good thing for some people because employees are the lifeblood, but they're also a huge cost, of course, to agencies. The biggest cost by far in the past. So, you know, that could be an opportunity. could, and it's also a threat. when we're talking about young people, the real danger is I think people, agency owners might shut off that. lifeblood, the artery of young people and say well we're going to use AI, we're going to have senior people using AI, we don't need juniors but of course then the danger is in the coming years and it might not be that long, it might be you know not talking years and years, I'm talking in the next couple of two, 12 months or whatever it might be. An agency which I've already started to see in a couple of people I know has some people and their senior people in their business leave or for whatever reason either attracted to other jobs or or leave for other reasons and then there's nobody coming through the ranks at a junior level to replace that person. There's nobody learning, bringing up from the ground up as there has been. There's not a pipeline of people if you like, which there has been for a long time. So I suppose what I'm saying is from an employer perspective, you've still got to invest in young talent, but you've got to do that wisely, of course. I think you've got to. spend a years ago, well again, yeah, keep using that phrase years ago, but in the past, the agency model has been bringing a junior person in, know, putting them in a certain role and they're trained through experience. They work with other people, more senior people. At some point, they start to interact with clients, not right away, but eventually. They experience different types of work design or SEO or whatever it might be. And then maybe they find the particular area that suits them or they enjoy or they're very good at. so time trains them, but not particularly formally and certainly in small agencies, different and big consultants and big businesses. it's the sort of time served. If they're the right people, they've managed to sort of absorb a lot of information and become focused and good on what they did and find their role. And think in today's world, that's got to be a lot quicker now. don't think employers can afford to spend that time. I don't think younger people want to work in that way. Again, personal experience tells me people want to know much quicker, much faster than I ever did at that age. What's my job? What's my role? What's my responsibility? Which are my clients? Because I need clients. I've been here three months now and I need some clients. Whereas in the past, I'd have been going...

Pauline 40:13

interesting.

Gareth Healey 40:14

So I think people need to be managed in a much different way and brought through in a much different way and trained. But I'm not talking training courses, although they might be relevant. I'm not talking about sending people away on courses. I'm talking about how you intentionally develop people, not just leave them in a role for six months, 12 months to get their mind, get their heads around and then see where they go then. You've got to really invest. not just financially in recruiting them but invest in time with them to train them.

Pauline 40:48

And I I think that was one of the last topics I wanted to gather also together because there are a lot of studies about the fact that in the next 10 years, like so many jobs will be touched by people needing new skills and new capabilities. I mean, AI is part of it, but then there are other, there are other. elements as well that are entering in the picture. So from where you stand and from what you are seeing day to day, like how should, let's say, a 30 to 50 people agency think about developing their people, upskilling or reskilling them? Like what are the critical elements to make sure they help people learn at different levels, different stages? and what is the best way to do it in order to be able to get 22 years olds in the field faster and put them in front of the client and have them act more or less independently so that they don't leave in six months because they're unhappy.

Gareth Healey 42:02

That's right, yeah, great question. this is where actually in my, this is a, well this is a sad thing to say in many ways, but don't think agencies really need to step up because I think there have been very, very poor agencies at this sort of stuff in the past. In fairness, many agencies or smaller agencies, small businesses haven't had the resources financially to invest in training, formal training really. on the job training. But as I've just described, with technology and the younger generation coming in, that needs to change. It also needs to change. I was just thinking there, as you speak, it needs to change. It should have already changed because of remote working as well, of course, because so many more people are remote working now and that Osmo training or learning by Osmosis, learning by overhearing people in the next desk or people talking in the kitchen area or whatever. how they dealt with a client problem or what the issue was. You just, course, with remote working, you don't get that now as much. And that's a big gap actually, because that was fundamentally how I picked up lot of my knowledge and managed to sort of get grip on my role in the earlier days, learning from other people and listening to what they were doing. So I you need to be more intentional about it. How do I think people should do that? Well, I think maybe there's a few things, I suppose. There's a real danger with AI in particular in that, you know, the senior people and actually seniors and juniors for that matter, we use AI to answer our problems or to give us a response without even really thinking through what the problem is fully. So I'm seeing this increasingly. was in a meeting last week, actually, with not a young senior person, a person of around my age. a client of mine who owns an agency. And they presented me with a marketing plan, a strategy to review. And I've read some of it and some of it is very good, but it's absolutely all AI generated. And I know that not just because of sort of tells, if you like, of dashes and that sort of stuff. They're in there. But just the whole structure of it, know, an individual wouldn't have written that report in the way that it's written in that business. You know, you might have, it's almost a McKinsey-esque, dare I say, approach to a report in a very small agency. So it just wouldn't have happened. I can say it's been written by AI. And you know what, I understand that, of course, because we've all done that, we're all doing that, but it screams AI. But that's not my biggest beef with it really. My biggest beef is with it really. They've probably not given that situation a lot of thought behind the scenes. You know, they've asked a question of an AI, LLM, chat bot or whatever, and it's given them an answer and they forwarded it on to me. so particularly for you going back to the young people and bringing people through, they've got to be given, rather than just given an answer or tool to use AI, I think they've got to be intentionally trained to think about the problem first. And to a degree, I'm doing that with my son. Sometimes comes in with a, hey, we need to do this with one of our clients. So I've got this opportunity. I've asked AI, Claude says this, I'm just going to do that. And it's not necessarily wrong, but sometimes I said to Callum, just before we do that, what is the problem here? What are we trying to solve? And as clever as he is, sometimes he stumbles. What do you mean? What's the problem? What's the fundamental? What's the issues around this problem that we're looking at? we covered all bases? Because you know, it's very easy to go on there to go straight to AI. So I think give people the problem before you give them the answer, certainly, or give them the direction to use AI to give them the answer. I think when you're solving problems as a senior person, take them through the They used to say, certainly in British schools, show your workings on maths problems. don't know. a, it's a, don't just give us the, which

Pauline 46:11

Yeah, yeah. We had the same.

Gareth Healey 46:14

is it for that principle of show people, younger people, how you got to that, that, that problem. Don't just say that's the answer. AI says that's let's do that. No, you've got to make, train them again to sort of, to help them to understand your reasoning so they can understand how they might approach that in the future. That type of problem in the future. I give them ownership of something early actually. Maybe with a bit of a safety net if you need one as a backstop in some way. people, younger people in my opinion, I'm not just talking about my son here, I'm talking about people I see in other agencies or people I talk to in other agencies that have got young people of course working for them. You people want responsibility far more and far quicker. more quickly now than I ever did at my age. They expect responsibility, they expect to be given something to own. So give them ownership, maybe, so don't keep them away from that. them, it to them, but give them, the ownership wisely and maybe give them a backstop or a safety net or have one in place. And then I think, as I've sort of... maybe touched upon but they were if AI has generated content or solutions ask the younger people to not just pass it on to the client as perhaps

Pauline 47:44

Yes.

Gareth Healey 47:46

ask them to critique it ask them to themselves without AI you know tell me what you'd have put in what's missing what's an angle here that the AI has missed or should have explored a bit more or maybe what's an angle here that the AI has included but actually is not that important in this brief. So it's that critical thinking and building sort of. reflection on what we're doing where we can into the business. Reflecting on what's doing, not just churning something out and sending it off. Because if that's the case, then we're all just going to be operators of AI, aren't we? We're just going to be the hands on the keyboards or whatever, rather than actually the brains, which is going to be a bad situation for us all.

Pauline 48:33

Yeah, so much agree with you, so true. Look, I love what you are sharing. I love the angle and the feeling. So we often talk about protecting the human connection at work now that AI is, as you said, like changing the way they operate. Any kind of closing thoughts or advice for everyone included, like agency founders, junior people on how to protect this human anger so that people grow together instead of talking to their laptops all the time.

Gareth Healey 49:15

Yeah, that's a great question. I there's quite a few things, think. Well, two things I'd focus on. The first more practical thing, guess, is as much as I understand and appreciate the need for and remote working now as a thing. Remote working is here to stay far more now than is It's not going away. But I do think rather than completely remote working, Unless you're a remote business that just fundamentally geographically you work in different countries and all that sort of thing, well that's clearly different thing. But if you're a business that allows and enables remote working, I still think I'm a hybrid fan, guess is what I'm trying to say. I'm a fan of this time in the office with people is still very important or would be very important to me if I was running an agency. That's not to say five days a week, but three days in, two days out or the other way around or whatever. I think that's a balance that is acceptable to many people hopefully these days and people that work in that way are something that people would like to work but also that's much more of balanced way of doing it for the business and the benefits of doing that are obvious but not always apparent. every day and day and day out, week in, week out. But over time, think the businesses that work like that will be much stronger culturally than they will if it's just pure remote working. So think the practical thing, but also on the AI angle of this question, think where people are, I think there's too many people looking at AI and starting to use it. So I think they should, you know, as a strategy. got this thing where, and Callum sort of helped me develop this sort of thinking where we should stop using AI actually, but not as in stop using it completely, but stop using it as a tool and start being an AI business. So start being an AI enabled business. So don't treat these things as tools that we use and we pick up and we just use to do our jobs, treat them, how can we integrate AI into the workflows and the systems and the processes? So we are fundamentally using AI, but it's just partly a business operating model. It's not, we're not just using tools individually to do our jobs and to do them a bit quicker and better and then do some other stuff. You know, we've to become a more AI enabled business. And so I think, you know, the agencies that have already and will generally benefit from AI, are the ones that have redesigned their workflows around AI. They've not just bolted some tools onto how they work currently. which goes back to maybe the sort of first part of one of the first points we were talking about. It goes back to having processes, doesn't it? And having systems in place and using a integrating AI with the systems, not just built in on tools.

Pauline 52:12

Yes, because this way people will still be able to talk to each other and we'll have time to go grab coffees and brainstorm ideas and AI can do them, the boring part.

Gareth Healey 52:22

and you your processes are, yes there's that sort of stuff but also the processes are ones of you know we all come together at this point as humans to discuss the output and then we feed it into AI again and that sort of thing it's very clear that I see there's certain stages here and gates and different things where the humans are always in control and humans are always in control but they've got there's always the oversight. humans on the quality and whether this is, you know, the work, whatever the work is, is a good enough standard or whether it could even be improved.

Pauline 52:57

Well, I don't have any more questions. I mean, I could have much more questions, but I think I should be also mindful of your time. Thank you very much for the conversation. I really enjoyed it. And I would love to have you for our second episode, for our second season.

Gareth Healey 53:13

That's very kind, thank you. I've really, really always enjoyed speaking to you Pauline and thank you for inviting me on. Hopefully that was useful for your listeners and yes, we'd love to come back if I'm invited at some point when you've got another season to do then we'd be delighted to join you again.

Pauline 53:31

Thank you so much. Talk soon. Bye-bye.

Gareth Healey 53:33

Thank you Pauline. Bye bye.