Ep 175: FCB New York - "The Curious Leaders"

President Emma Armstrong, co-CCO’s Gabriel Schmitt and Michael Aimette, and their Chief Strategy Officer, Todd Sussman, are the leadership team of FCB New York.

This summer, the Cannes Lions named FCB The Network of the Year. The agency’s journey over the last eight years has seen it transformed from a company that most people didn’t care about to one that now stands as a reference point for how to unlock creative thinking on a global scale.

FCB is a case study for growing a business by first defining and then living through a strategy.

But, when I meet the company’s leaders - whether at the global level or those responsible for running offices - I’m always struck by the human connection between them.

According to a recent McKinsey report, 15 million US workers - and counting - have left their jobs since April of this year. The “Great Resignation” as it’s now being called has become one of the most disruptive forces in business since the 2008 financial crash, with potentially deeper and longer lasting consequences.

People no longer want to work at jobs they’re not interested by. Which seems like an obvious statement except that for decades, and maybe forever, that hasn’t been the case.

In fact the company - employee contract has long been built around the understanding that many aspects of many jobs would be intellectually and emotionally unsatisfying but would come with the promise of something better in the future.

That equation doesn’t work in the same way any more.

As a leader, how you rewrite that equation depends on how you see the world yourself.

Are you, as Emma describes, curious about the power of creativity and where the world is going next? And are you taking people on that journey of discovery and possibility?

Or are you working to meet the expectations of someone’s else’s over-promise? And then you have to ask yourself, is that really leading at all?

Curiouser and curiouser.