Change Everything. Rebranding a business when there are no right answers.
I felt my stomach sink.
“We think you should position yourselves as the “Engagement Experts”, the lead strategist from the agency said before unleashing a stream of perfunctory phrases to describe what we do. We had been using this moniker for the past five years, and — despite investing hours of time and twenty thousand pounds in communicating its shortcomings — it was being mirrored back to me five days before the rebrand project deadline.
I summoned all of my poise and carefully shared my worry of unveiling that our agency had just charged us £20k to read our homepage back to us. I tried to sound like I was joking, but I wasn’t. Throughout 2021, I had advocated for half a dozen agencies to be helicopter-dropped into our business to “tell us the answer” and accelerate our progress. Yet I repeatedly found myself asking better questions and — after receiving a chorus of “good question, David” — providing better answers.
Now I found myself on the verge of pitching the most drastic of rebrands — a name change — to a resistant and embattled CEO with only my answers in a slightly more expensive-looking PowerPoint.
Throughout the meeting, I found myself pacing around the kitchen. Conscious of maintaining my poise and constructive tone in the face of what felt like sheer incredulity. Connectivity issues had already hampered the remote meeting, so we all had our webcams off. On reflection, this was a blessing as I doubt I’d be able to hide the anguish on my face.
I liked the agency team I was working with, and I didn’t want to offend them. After all, I had been the one to select them from a strong short-list against my CEO’s recommendation. But now, I felt that shared camaraderie had resulted in complacency on their part. The six-week project had flown by and I had excused small but telling missteps that I normally wouldn’t.
A disjointed meeting schedule.
Changed recommendations upon receiving the slightest of pushback.
The frequent absence of their commercial lead.
— all signs I noted and excused. And on the most important and consequential project of my career.
What we, as a business, do is complicated. Historically to our detriment. Previously I had flooded agencies with the complex breadth and depth of what we do, and I partially blamed this for the spluttering responses I had received. And despite being careful not to do this again, part of what we had paid for was for the agency to wade through the quagmire and filter out the compelling truth. But on difficult days like this, I wonder whether there was actually anything to find.
Throughout the project, I had been careful to caveat every opinion, idea or potential approach with “please challenge me if you think I’m wrong” and yet nobody did. As an avid subscriber to the wisdom of Marshall Goldsmiths (of “What got you here, Won’t get you there” fame) I have his assertion that “suggestions from leaders become orders” imprinted on my brain. But I have held up the mirror many times and really feel this isn’t the problem.
Perhaps there are just no better answers.
Agencies and external contributors need to bring something that you don’t have. Most of the time, it’ll be the skills or resource that are missing from your business at that time. On this occasion, we needed critical thinking and marketing strategy to conclude how and how much we would rebrand and reposition ourselves. But, on reflection, I already had these skills. And if I’m frank with myself, I was really paying for them to give me comfort and certainty in whatever direction we chose.
This is something that money cannot buy.
Whilst it feels far from humble to say, critical thinking and strategy are my two strengths. My privilege to spend a hundred thousand pounds this year on the time of my peers’ has shown as much.
I need to build confidence in my work not to require validation of my critical thinking from others.
I need to build clarity in identifying the external skills that truly would add value to the delivery of that thinking.
And I need to build conviction in my standards to ensure those executing my plans maintain robust foundations.
Whilst remaining open to new ideas… Whilst building my own skills… Whilst giving people space to do their best work…
Leadership is delicate contradiction.
