Articles & Opinion

The best client partners I meet are willing to be enthusiastically wrong. In hindsight, I spent most of my agency career trying to be safely right. What does "safely right" mean? Excellent delivery: a well-executed version of an output that meets the brief. But excellent delivery is no longer enough. It's just resting at the new baseline. To reach higher, we give multiple options, each more innovative and outcome-focused than the last. This feels like going beyond safe, and i

It's the question a lot of people ask a good way into their agency career – not because anything's wrong, but because everything's fine and there's no obvious reason to change. I asked it myself a few years ago: a satisfying career in client service, everything good on paper, and still it nagged. Will I ever do anything different? Or will this be it? I found this dilemma explored in Herminia Ibarra's excellent book, 'Working Identity'. For much of our lives, a default script

A scene familiar to any agency leader: a critical problem with a critical client, or a crunch point in the year-defining pitch. The account handler comes asking for direction – what should be done? Relieved to have an answer, they leave quickly, keen to get on before more time is wasted. Underneath, feeling uncertain not just about how it will play out, but why this way is best. The account handler can't ask why this way is best because asking feels like weakness, plus the qu