Ep 214: Devika Bulchandani of Ogilvy - "The 'I Love You' Leader"

Before we start, I want to acknowledge the death of someone who played a big role in helping Chris and I to create the film editing company that we built in the ‘90s and 2000s.

Jim Garrett was a brilliant businessman and a gentleman. He was the founder of the award winning and internationally recognized production company, Garrett and Partners, and he worked with directors like John Schlesinger, Nick Roeg, Ken Russell and Richard Loncraine along the way. I’ve posted a link to his obituary in the London Times in this week’s show notes.

When we were conceiving our film editing company in 1994, Jim sat down with Chris and I over lunch in London, and gave us advice that formed the foundational DNA of a business which is still thriving almost thirty years later. Many of the principles and practices on which that business operates today came from that lunch. All of us who have spent any part of our careers working at the original Lookinglass or at the Whitehouse film editing companies owe Jim our thanks. His impact was and is enormous.

And now, on with the show.

Devika Bulchandani is the global CEO of Ogilvy. And her view of leadership includes an impassioned belief that seemed so obvious to me once she said it, but which I have never heard before.

The business of running a business does not usually contain much discussion of love. You hear people say occasionally, “I love what I’m doing,” or “I love where I work.” You can see evidence of passion in some people, particularly business founders.

But the idea of saying “I love you” to a co-worker will send tremors down the backs of HR and Talent leaders across the entire spectrum of the creative industries.

And yet, as Devika asks, wouldn’t the world be better by the way if we all just felt more of it?

We live in a time of apparently limitless upheaval. And we will spend roughly a quarter of that time at our jobs.

Shouldn’t part of that upheaval be to challenge the norms under which we’re working?

Including the possibility that “I love you” might be a leading indicator of what it means to be a more human leader.

Where do you draw the line? And why?