How do you continually embed AI to create a high-performing business?

Fergus Dyer-Smith is founder and CEO of Wooshi, an AI-enabled content business. He got early access to the original GPT from OpenAI back in late-2020.

In this episode, Fergus shares how he:

• Realised the potential of AI early on and created automated solutions for most business processes
• Built an AI-powered creative ideation product that ended up replacing their Creative Director
• Developed an AI tool that enables their sales team to generate client proposals without input from the creative team
• Advocates for widespread AI adoption to save time, encouraging people to reinvest that time to find new ways to add value
• Expects us to deliver up to 100 times the output compared to a pre-AI world
• Proactively prepares for AI to potentially replace him, ensuring he's ready for whatever’s next

Fergus firmly believes that AI will lead to opportunity and abundance for all of us. While its adoption can feel scary, he feels great excitement about the possibilities.

How do you create a performance culture whilst maintaining warmth and affection?

Ian Finch is founder and CEO of Mando Group, a digital consultancy that makes technology work for everyone. He’s been running the business for 27 years.

In this episode, Ian shares how he:

• Moved away from decision-making led by informal watercooler moments to being highly metric-driven
• Uses the VMOST framework to cascade business goals into team, department and individual goals
• Profiled his superheroes internally and built out values and core competencies from their behaviour
• Realised that his workaholic tendencies and high expectations meant that his team couldn’t thrive
• Uses NLP coaching with his team so they come up with the answers themselves and get into a performance state
• Moved away from having a ‘duty obligation’ by realising that just because he can do something, it doesn't mean he should do it

Ian candidly shares the story of his major burnout and having to step away from running the business for 3 months. He gradually reintegrated and transformed his leadership style to become an enabler to his team.

How do you become truly self-aware as a business leader?

Nikki Gatenby is a Non-Exec Director, Cognitive Behavioural Coach and bestselling author of 2 books. She has 25 years of agency experience including 10 years running the agency, Propellernet.

In this episode, Nikki shares how she:

• Articulates business visions in a novel way so they’re memorable and easy to understand
• Pushes for a culture where everyone can say when things aren’t working so they all develop and grow
• Looks after people's wellbeing and avoids them burning out by regularly asking 4 simple questions
• Brings in backward reflection and retrospectives so teams always learn from their experiences
• Enables personal growth by getting everyone to be learn-it-alls (and not know-it-alls)
• Uses working style analysis so teams understand how best to work with each other

Nikki talks openly about her 25-year career - including how she self-manages to prevent her two previous burnout events from ever happening again.

How do you achieve rapid growth with a diverse team across 3 continents?

Hannah Springett is Founder & CEO of HLabs. She started her no-code creative agency just 4 years ago and has rapidly scaled to a global team of 40 people.

In this episode, Hannah shares how she:

• Instills a growth mindset within the team so they believe anything is possible
• Places authenticity at the heart of everything she does - including being open about her endeavours going wrong
• Has learnt to supercharge her empathy skills - especially to get the best out of introverts
• Values diversity and intentionally recruits globally to increase this even more
• Spends quality time with team members to properly understand their ambitions and motivations
• Maps out her 10-year vision for each pillar of the business, aligning everyone around a set of big lofty goals

Hannah is deeply committed to changing the lives of each of her employees. She shares how she does this in our open and authentic conversation.

How do you grow to 300 people globally with a laser focus on people and culture?

Tamara Littleton is Executive Chair & Founder at Social Element. She started the agency as a remote-first business 22 years ago.

In this episode, Tamara shares how she:

• Puts attracting and retaining brilliant talent at the top of their flywheel and as their key business objective
• Used her corporate background to apply strategic thinking from day one and grow into a large business
• Leads from the back to keep out of people’s way and allow them to take the business forward
• Appointed external auditors to measure how well they’re doing for diversity and help them continuously improve
• Rolled out DISC training across the business so everyone better understands each other, is more respectful and challenges ideas
• Takes it as her personal responsibility to retain the culture so the team keeps turning up every day and doing a great job

Tamara openly shares her 22-year journey from sole founder to handing over the running of the business and appointing two co-CEOs.

How do you set the weather in your business and get everyone to love what they do?

Becky Simms is Founder and CEO of the agency group, Human First Collective. 14 years ago she founded her agency, Reflect Digital, which she integrated into the group last year.

In this episode, Becky shares how she:

• Is driven by the mantra, “Find a job you love and you’ll never work a day in your life”
• Has a robust, clearly defined recruitment and onboarding process, ensuring every hire is a great cultural fit
• Uses a ‘Vivid Vision’ and working groups so everyone deeply buys into the company direction
• Brings their values to life with external speakers, including a Gold-winning Olympian
• Invested heavily in tech to make team meetings fully inclusive and engaging for remote participants
• Transitioned the agency to a flexible 4-day workweek - and has never looked back

Becky firmly believes that the leadership team sets the weather for the agency. This philosophy guides all her communications.

How do you grow while continuously strengthening your culture and developing antibodies to incompatible working styles?

Steven Writer-Maguire is Director at the consultancy Clarasys. He joined the firm 8 years ago and has overseen growth from 40 to over 200 people in London and Boston.

In this episode, Steven shares how he:

• Rapidly transitioned away from a traditional hierarchical consultancy mindset to one of trust and enablement
• Set up a Team of Teams model where multi-disciplinary teams make decisions and collectively solve client problems by themselves
• Uses their monthly F**k Up Challenge so everyone can safely share mistakes and learnings
• Encourages people to act as business owners and make their own decisions about what’s best for the company
• Puts everyone through their internal course, Clarasys Code, so they all learn about emotional intelligence and neuroscience
• Created the Clarasys Triangle (featuring People, Business and Clients) to guide their decision-making

Steven passionately shares his ‘why’: To build the best firm their people will ever work for. As a result, their culture gets stronger the larger they grow.

How do you set happiness as your North Star to drive year-on-year growth for 12 years?

Jaye Cowle is Founder at Launch. She started her performance marketing agency 12 years ago. She’s overseen continued growth with a focus on people-powered performance.

In this episode, Jaye shares how she:

• Placed the concept of ‘powered by happiness’ at the core of what they do internally and with clients
• Uses the 3 pillars of Autonomy, Mastery and Purpose to underpin team motivation
• Accepts that their happiness proposition can be off-putting... but it’s worth it so they don’t have a vanilla agency proposition
• Created a feedback culture where people can communicate how happy they are, share ideas and celebrate each other weekly
• Uses their values as a common shared language in recruitment, onboarding, personal development and celebrating successes
• Is shaping their client offerings around their values and happiness mantra, elevating them beyond their current service offering

Jaye also talks about the impact of her near-death brush with cancer 5 years ago. She leans in far more on the things she’s passionate about and lives a more amplified life.