If you're running towards the fire and identifying the things that you might be fearful of and
know that there's another 400 people that are all turning up running towards the fire
every day, I think the collective will be phenomenal.
I'd try and get myself on the Survivor and go and sit there in the jungle in Fiji and
throw myself against the elements.
Hi, I'm Sally Patton, editor of BOSS from the Australian Financial Review.
And welcome to 15 Minutes with the BOSS, a podcast about success and failure and everything
And along the way, we're hoping to get some really great advice from our leaders.
My guest today is Justin Graham, the chief executive of MNC Saatchi in Australia and
Very well, thanks.
Thank you so much for coming into the studio.
Hope you're ready for your grilling.
Let's get into it.
Now, Justin, you're the CEO of MNC Saatchi in Australia and New Zealand, which is an
advertising and marketing agency.
You have an annual turnover of around $100 million a year.
You have more than 400 employees.
And your major clients include Woolworths, Commonwealth Bank, Optus and Australian Retirement
And I have to note, we can blow our own whistle, you are a former BOSS Young executive.
And I think it was 2013 when you were given that award?
And over here, as we record this, it's just down the road that we did the live simulation
as well, which was terrifying, but also great.
Life changing, I'm told.
Okay, Justin, we've only got 15 minutes, so the clock is going to start right now.
So my first question is about your morning routine.
What time do you get up?
What happens when you get up?
I'm up early, usually has five in front of it in terms of the time.
How many minutes after five?
Not many minutes after five, but it's not really a routine for me.
I report into management in the UK as well.
So some mornings might be picking up late calls from them in the UK.
I have a ferocious, brutal called Dudley that demands that I get him out there in the morning
So I'll sometimes join my wife for a walk as well, or in the warmer months, a dip in
So there isn't really a routine around that.
And I think my default is going into the office.
I work across Australia and New Zealand, but I'm based in Sydney.
And so I'll go into the office almost every day and I don't have a routine around that
So it doesn't worry you not having a routine, because I find a lot of executives really
like to have that morning routine so they can get up and don't have to think about it.
Yeah, I think it's a moment of reflection, inspiration.
If I'm in the water, I get to go and think about the day ahead.
If I'm walking, I'm debriefing around what's going to happen, what happened the day before.
I get the onslaught of emails in the morning and certainly being in a local role, but connected
globally as well.
There will be, I guess, an overnight push around what needs to be done.
And I'd love to have more discipline, but that's absolutely something I look at straight
away there as well before I get into some of those activities.
And are you a breakfast kind of guy?
I love breakfast actually, and I think it's important.
I'll often have breakfast in the office or at a cafe near the office as well.
Again, there's not necessarily a routine about it, but the idea of having breakfast
in the morning is important.
If I haven't done that, I feel like I'm chasing my tail all day.
Yeah, I'm with you.
I'm a breakfast kind of person too.
My next question is about a pivotal moment in your career.
Can you tell me about a pivotal moment that changed the trajectory of your career or somehow
changed you as a business leader?
For me, it was in 2007, I was fortunate to move to New York and work for a large advertising
business, BBDO at the time, and work on some global accounts.
In 2007 in New York, I just opened my eyes to the role of creativity around business
overall, not just coming from creativity that I'd known from probably the Western world,
but this extraordinary creativity coming from emerging markets as well.
And what do you mean by that creativity coming from emerging markets or by the business creativity?
Just thinking differently around the rituals and what's important to people as they're
moving up through different socioeconomic chapters in their career, in their life as well,
thinking around what their practical needs are, what the emotions they are that they
have around whether brands or products that were being sold or made available to them.
So that was all very interesting and off the backdrop of a financial crisis that happened
And we were around the corner from Lehman Brothers and seeing, again, another substantial
change around that industry.
And then Obama coming into power at the end of 2008 there as well.
So such significant events that were challenging institutional constructs at the time around
that, certainly from the financial crisis in particular, was asking many people to think
around the role of life, of gender, of the role of money, et cetera.
And then at the same time, there was being, and I was working on Gillette at the time,
which is a very American-centered brand.
It's the largest male brand in the world.
Actually, at the time there were 800 million men waking up every day and using a Gillette
product of some sort around the world.
And so to think around the diversity within that hundreds of millions of users every day,
the majority of those were coming from developing countries.
And at the time it was China, India, Brazil.
And so how to connect products that had come from quite a Western construct in those markets
And it was the parent of Gillette, Procter & Gamble are brilliant at leaning into true
human insight to understand how their products can better connect with people.
And obviously the messages that you deliver and experiences that happen around those products.
And so for me, coming from little old Sydney, going over there to New York, it was a fascinating
time for me around thinking around the role of creativity and commerce together.
Because the clients are so much more diverse because you're working in such a big market.
Diverse, scale, cross-border.
It's probably more on the line as well, just because once you launch a new product,
it's going to go to hundreds of millions of people as opposed to a million people.
And I found that just invigorating.
Okay. My next question.
What is the best piece of career advice you've ever been given?
When I stepped into this role, a CEO from one of our clients called me up to offer
congratulations. And he just said to me, leadership isn't a sprint, it's a marathon.
And what I can see marathons require a lot of preparation, a lot of planning.
When you get in there, it's constant decision-making.
Once you're actually in that moment as well, there's changing conditions around you.
You've got to internalize how you're feeling, what's happening around you.
But you're always focused on getting to the finish line.
And whatever finish line that might be, that's just an objective,
whether it's a time or a distance or whatever it might be.
And so from a leadership perspective, I find a lot of inspiration out of that as well.
It's being a great leader requires that planning, that preparation.
Things are going to change very quickly.
You're going to physically, mentally be in a very different state every day to what
you thought you might be or what you were the day before.
So you've got to continue to make those changes around you.
And so are you a planner?
I'm a planner, apart from in the mornings, it would seem.
Clearly. Yes. Apart from the mornings.
So in order to be a planner, are you constantly having to sort of change your daily schedule
to make sure that you're meeting your plan or meeting your objectives and meeting,
fulfilling those plans?
Yeah, there's definitely not enough hours in the day to do everything.
So there is a need for prioritization, almost hourly, but definitely through the day.
Definitely as you get to the middle of the day and think, what am I trying to achieve?
And is what I'm putting my efforts against, is that actually going towards that?
Oh, so do you consciously think that around lunchtime, say, or early afternoon?
Yeah. Someone in the office showed me a great function on Google where you can colour code
everything that you're doing and track that.
So whether you're engaged with a client, whether you're having downtime, personal time,
whether you've got internal meetings, whether it's a new business.
And so that allows you to visually look back and see where you're prioritizing your time.
And there's a great function in there where you can actually go and see the percentage
and measure that against what you think you should be doing in terms of spending your time.
And it is alarming, actually. It was certainly alarming for me around what I saw
versus what I thought I was doing overall.
And it's a great checkpoint because the data doesn't lie.
And actually, there's a lot of tools like that within the G Suite that allow you just to be
able to go and manage your day. And if I was thinking about my mornings being largely
unstructured, it feels like when I get into the work environment, it does become very structured.
And actually, we've got these tools now to allow us to do that.
Okay, Justin, stay right where you are.
We're going to take a short break. And when we come back, we're going to open the Chatterbox.
Welcome back to 15 Minutes with the Box. I am here with Justin Graham,
the Chief Executive of M&C Saatchi in Australia and New Zealand.
Now, Justin, this is our section called the Chatterbox.
It's as beautiful as you see, shiny brown box, cardboard, of course. Inside the box,
there are 20 or so questions all folded up on little bits of paper.
I'm now going to ask you to pick out some questions one by one, hand them to me,
and I will, of course, then ask you to answer them. So, Justin, start foraging in the box.
Okay. All right. Let's find something here.
Okay. There we go.
Okay. How long should meetings go for?
We've fallen into a trap of trying to solve the same things through the same time frame
and largely construct within a meeting. And I talk to my team about this all the time,
that if it's five minutes for a walk to solve something, that's great. If we need to be more
expansive in our thinking, let's give ourselves a day. I think somehow we've ended up in this
world where it's half an hour, one hour slots effectively to get to an outcome. And we often
don't need to use that time because it's something that could have been solved within 15 minutes
straight away. Oh, so we should be much more flexible about how long we think the meeting
is going to take. I think people should be really
clear what they want to get out of the meeting at the start. Again, something that doesn't happen
often enough, but totally flexible in terms of is it people walking around the block together for
half an hour? Is it sitting in a room in a very constructive and organised environment for an hour?
I think it's horses for courses around meetings. So do you do a lot of walking meetings?
I do. What sort of meetings do you find work best as a walking meeting?
Often sensitive topics. I think there's that old thought around men in particular,
don't like to look eye to eye with each other, certainly around sensitive topics. Often people
can feel relaxed. We can get into the nub of a problem or the opportunity there by just walking
side by side around that. It's not exclusive just to, I guess, a male male construct there,
but often more sensitive topics would be something that I would lean into that.
Interesting. Okay. Next question. Fish around. How do you create a positive culture within
your company? One of the big changes we've made over the
last three or four years has been a very core set of values that we all align to, to create,
I guess, a code on how we're going to engage with each other. Things like
be excellent to each other is one of our values. Another one is run towards the fire.
We've got a disclaimer. If there's actually a fire, please don't run towards it and go
look for the fire exits. Yeah. But I think by aligning around our values,
our values are literally plastered on our walls. We ask our creative people to visually refresh
them every three months as well based on what they're inspired by. So the words don't change,
but the visuals change. Did you find that helps?
It does because I think people can see our own creativity and output within our physical space
and with our online space as well. But the values are naturally positive and I guess,
encouraging forward momentum and very directional in terms of how we expect people to engage with
each other. Run to the fire. What do you mean by that?
We asked some of our senior leaders, creative leaders to articulate what a common set of
values would be across our business. And we have five values. And one I love is run towards the
fire is the thinking behind our people being more fearless in what they do, that there are
difficult conversations that have to happen every day. There's often difficult conversations
happen with clients as well that people can kick the can down the road on. And so if you're running
towards the fire and identifying the things that you might be fearful of and know that there's
another 400 people that are all turning up running towards the fire every day, I think the collective
will be phenomenal within our business. So don't beat around the bush, have a
difficult conversation, attack the problem head on.
That's right. Yeah, that's right. It's very visual as well to be able to think around
what we expect. And it's a key part of our recruitment as well that people can see our
values. And hopefully it's a key part of why clients would come and work with us as well,
because they would know that that's almost an unwritten contract. They have people that are
running towards the fire and they're going to lean into the difficult conversations as well as
celebrate the wins. I'm going to adopt that. I love that. Thank you. All right. Great. Next question.
Okay. What's your pet hate in the office? Silence. Please. Some people will hate me
saying that because they love silence in an office. Music's a big part of how I engage
through the day. It always has been. I have music on in the morning. I listen to music on the way
into the office on occasions and in the office. I really, it's not just music, but I like noise
around me. And for me, and maybe it's a more old fashioned approach, but it feels like there's
buzz and there's busyness around me as well. And my wife would laugh when she's hopefully
going to listen to this around my need for noise in the house as well. I've got three girls,
so there's no problems with noise in my house. I can imagine. But I am very deliberate around,
and we're actually reorganizing the office at the moment around making sure that there is a buzz
around our client experience, around people feeling that they can have those moments of quiet.
But when we're all sitting together, there's a buzz and a noise around that piece. So silence
would be what annoys me. Wow. Okay. So what's your favorite type of music and who are your
favorite artists? What a question. What a question. Well, I think since we're talking about music,
we might as well. That's right. I'm listening to a podcast because we're on a podcast. And my
favorite podcast at the moment is a podcast called 60 songs that explained the nineties.
And because I grew up through that period, I feel like I am finding things out about myself
that I wasn't smart enough to know when I was a teenager through that period. And so I am at the
moment, very, very deep into nineties, early nineties music. And these podcasts go for up
to two hours to investigate one song and, and all the influences around that one song.
Wow. Amazing. And so without going into all the bands, that would be the era for me very
much. And, and all the wonderful nineties bands that that produced. All right. And do you find
that there is a lot of chatter in the office? So people get the fact that you don't really like
silence. Yeah, they do. Yeah. So there probably will be some people that might listen to this and
think, gee, okay, I better turn the music up. I'll be a bit noisier because I've got to respect
people as well, that they come into the office and they need silence as well. And so it is
definitely a balance of creating those spaces for that to happen. I think when everyone's together,
there's a great buzz of just ideas bouncing off each other. Yeah. No, I love that. Okay.
On that note, that's the end of our chatterbox section.
I now have one final question for you, which we ask all our guests. And that is if you had
12 months off, unencumbered, you could do anything you like. What would you do?
I'd try and get myself on Survivor. Really? And go and sit there in the jungle in Fiji and throw
myself against the elements. So what do you particularly love about Survivor?
It's just great. I love the longevity of the platform as well. It's the only reality program
I watch. It's the mashing together of all these people with different motivations and backgrounds
in a space where they're throwing themselves against the elements and they're just so evil
and conniving with each other as well, which I don't know if I'd cope in that environment.
So do you think you'd be one of the conniving ones?
I think I'd be out early, but I'd love to throw myself into it. I don't think I'm there at the
end. But I do like the idea of just throwing myself into an environment like that at one point
in my life. Probably have to put myself on broadcast TV to go and do that. But maybe
there's something in there which is around getting back to nature more and getting back
into the elements would be something I'd do if I had more time.
And that is our time up. Justin, thank you so much for allowing us to spend 15 minutes
with the boss. It's been a great pleasure talking to you.
Thanks very much.
I particularly love listening to your views about leadership being a marathon, not a sprint.
And the fact that in order to run that entire marathon, you have to do a lot of planning.
And I really hope that you get on the Survivor program because I can't wait to see you.
And thank you so much for allowing us to spend 15 minutes with the boss.
Pleasure. It was a lot of fun.
And thank you to everyone for listening. If you like the podcast and would like to hear more,
consider sharing the podcast or writing a review as it helps us to reach more people.
And follow us wherever you get your podcasts. At The Finance Review, we investigate the big
stories about markets, business and power. You can subscribe to The Finance Review,
The Daily Habit of Successful People, at afr.com forward slash subscribe.
This podcast was hosted by me, Sally Patton, produced and edited by Lap Fan.
Our theme is by Alex Gao, and our executive producer is Fiona Buffini.
The Australian Financial Review